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MEMOIRS

OF THE

EMBASSY

OF THE

MARSHAL DE BASSOMPIERRE

COURT OF ENGLAND

IN 1626:

TRANSLATED. L J . H". fo.fff^yi

WITH NOTES. U. 'a ,4. .; .'vf'oj

LONDON : JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE -STREET. 1819.

SKETCH

OF THE

LIFE OF BASSOMPIERRE.

Francis de Bestein *, or Bassompierre, of a noble family in Alsace, was born in 1579. After a better domestic education than we should have expected in a feudal castle and the sixteenth century, he was sent into Germany and Italy; and in 1598, to complete his travels, arrived at Paris. Here he was already advantageously known by the report of the young friends

* I conjecture that the name was originally Bessen- stein, contracted into Bestein, and translated into Bas sompierre. a J vi SKETCH OF THE

whom he had made in Italy ; and the ser vices, in the French armies, of his ances tors, and particularly of his father, — who had commanded a regiment of Reiters * for Henry IV., and had been, like his royal master, wounded at Ivry, — entitled him to a favourable reception. But his sudden success outran all intro duction. A few days after his arrival some young gentlemen devised to entertain Henry IV., who was now convalescent at Monceaux, with a ballet. Bassompierre, though un- introduced and unknown to the king, was accidentally associated in the party, and, with his gay companions, and all the equipage of their sport, proceeded, in six coaches, to the royal presence. The ballet seems to have been somewhat satirical. The king's indisposition was a surgical case, and the giddy troop, in the disguise of barber- surgeons, ventured to amuse the good-

* Reiters; riders; cavalry. LIFE OF BASSOMPIERRE. vii

natured monarch with his own infirmity. When the ballet was over, young Bassom- pierre was introduced to the king, and by him to the " Belle Gabrielle," Duchess of Beaufort, the hem of whose garment he at first kissed; but the gallant Henry walked aside to afford the young cavalier an opportunity (as he tells us) of kissing her in earnest. In short, Henry was captivated with Bassompierre, and Bassompierre, of course, with Henry. This interview transformed the young Alsatian into a Frenchman ; and (with the exception of a campaign or two in Hungary in 1603 and 1604,) the rest of his life was passed in the service of France, in which he obtained, besides the king's orders of knighthood, public embassies, and other minor favours, the great military offices of colonel-general of the Swiss, and marshal of France. He was made to prosper. His personal a 2 Vlii SKETCH OF THE accomplishments, his courage, wit, gallantry, and generosity, justified the favours he re ceived; but the title of a favourite, even in those days of favouritism, he had the good sense or good fortune to escape. He was treated by Henry IV. with distinction and with friendship; by Louis XIII. he was respected, employed, and advanced; by Mary of Medicis he was honoured with a confidence and esteem, softened, perhaps, by the difference of sexes ; and Richelieu paid him the still higher compliment of fearing and persecuting him. His lot was brilliant : — the pattern of all the men — the passion of all the women — spending his life between the extremes of military hardship and courtly pleasures. — He was — in the combination of his merits and his faults (and we can hardly distinguish them,) — the most remarkable man of his age ; and one is not at all surprised at finding the proud but well-judging Mademoiselle LIFE OF BASSOMPIERRE. ix

de Montpensier recording among the bril liant visions of her youth, " cet illustre Bas- sompierre." In 1601, happening to be at Calais, his friend, the Duke of Biron *, " debauched" him into an excursion to England. Bas- sompierre got no further than London. Queen Elizabeth being at the Vine, in Hampshire, Biron followed her thither, and had the pleasure of seeing her majesty " hunt, attended by more than fifty ladies, all mounted on hackneys." Next day he returned to rejoin his friend in London, and after a further stay of three days the travellers returned to France — Biron to lose his life on a scaffold : and Bassompierre to risk his in the field, and hardly less often in

* The Duke of Biron was at this time engaged in his mad conspiracy against his friend and benefactor, Henry IV.; and that good-natured prince sent him on this mission of ceremony to England in hopes to divert and reclaim him from this guilty intrigue ; — as if ambition could be distracted like love, by absence and the change of scene. X SKETCH OF THE the city. In the latter he encountered all the adventures incident to a profligate and punctilious court, a turbulent capital, and unsettled times. He passed through them all with honour, and generally with safety ; in one adventure, however, he was not so fortunate. " On Tuesday the 27th Feb. 1605, the king said to the Duke of Guise, ' D'Entragues * despises us all, she is so enamoured of Bas- sompierre, — I say it who know it.' ' Sire,' answered the Duke of Guise, ' you have means enough to revenge yourself; but for me, I have only those of a knight-errant, and I will break three lances with him in open lists, this very evening if your majesty will afford us a field.' " (Mem. i. 164.) The king consented — the courtyard of the Louvre was immediately gravelled for

* Mile. D'Entragues was the sister of Madame de Verneuil. The king had a natural child by one, and Bassompierre by the other of these ladies. Nor were they the only favoured lovers. LIFE OF BASSOMPIERRE. XI the tourney — the knights met — the duke's lance was shivered ; but by awkwardness or malice he gave poor Bassompierre a most dreadful and dangerous wound with the ragged stump. He was borne off the field amidst the tears of the king and all the spectators, and the ladies of the court crowded with amorous anxiety to watch, with their own eyes, the disgusting opera tions of the surgeons. Bassompierre be lieved his hurt to be mortal, and prepared to die with the piety and courage of a christian knight. He recovered, however, and the constant attendance of princesses and ladies round his bed repaid, in his opinion, his danger and his sufferings. But it was not the fair sex alone that was dazzled and captivated by Bassompierre. The old Constable de Montmorenci se lected the happy stranger as the husband of his only daughter, the richest and most beautiful woman of France. This match was defeated by a most unexpected obstacle. Xil SKETCH OF THE

Henry IV., though now in his fifty-seventh year, fell madly, literally madly, in love with the beautiful heiress ; and thinking his friend Bassompierre likely to prove an un accommodating husband, interfered to marry Mile, de Montmorenci, in spite of herself and her family, to the Prince de Conde, whom he expected (but he was mistaken) to find of a more convenient temper. The king considered his conduct in this affair as a favour and not an injury to Bas sompierre. He even had the goodness to tell him that he was too much his friend to let him marry a woman whom he intended to debauch ; and so, designing to be

" A little more than kin and less than kind," he united her to his cousin. Bassompierre does not seem to have been sufficiently grateful for this delicate, distinc tion; he however appears to have con soled himself for this disappointment by triumphs in other quarters. In the year. LIFE OF BASSOMPIERRE. xiii

1607, he won at play, " though distracted from it by a thousand follies of youth and love," upwards of 500,000 livres, and the day before he was sent to the Bastille he burned more than six thousand love letters, with which different ladies had been from time to time so good as to honour him. Nor was he less successful at court or in war : — , he was a thriving statesman and a victorious soldier, and appears to have obtained, with out effort or affectation, every species of glory. But, " the paths of glory lead but to the grave," and often to the grave through the dungeon. The gallant, gay, illustre Bassompierre passed the melancholy evening of his glo rious day in the Bastille, a prisoner from the fifty-second to the sixty-fourth year of his age. The substantial motive was his attachment to the queen-mother, Mary of Medicis, and his supposed complicity in the intrigues xiv SKETCH OF THE against Richelieu ; but the immediate cause, as we gather from his own account, is singularly trivial. He passed twelve years in a dungeon because he had not kept an engagement to dinner. On that famous St. Martin's day, the 11th NoV. 1630, (so justly called " la Journee des Dupes,") when Richelieu's enemies had shaken, and flattered themselves that they had overthrown, his credit, and that the queen-mother and the queen-consort would henceforward possess the whole power of the state ; when Louis fled to Versailles to avoid the trouble of dismissing his minister, and the monks of Pontoise were preparing the dormitory of the disgraced cardinal ; in short, while the intrigue was in balance, and

Jove, in air, Weigh'd the men's wits against the lady's hair,

Bassompierre happened to meet Richelieu going into the Luxembourg to make one final attempt to reconcile himself with the LIFE OF BASSOMPIERRE. XV queen-mother. " Ah," said his eminence, " you care little about a poor disgraced fel low like me." The honest Bassompierre was stung at the reproach, and, in token of his undiminished regard, invited himself to dine with his Eminence, who accepted the offer, and went into the closet ; but during his prolonged audience, most unfortunately for Bassompierre, — (he swears he knew no thing of what was going on, but can we believe him?) — the Duke de Longueville happened to pass that way, and "debauched" the marshal to a dinner with the Duke of Orleans and M. de Crequi, all capital ene mies of the cardinal; — who (finding the queen presumptuous and inexorable, and seeing that even his intended guest had abandoned him,) left his too confident ene mies to dine at Paris at their leisure, — - took the bold resolution of following the king to Versailles, — regained his influence over the mind of the weak sovereign, — and blasted in half an hour the long-nursed xvi SKETCH OF THE hopes of the Dupes. In a short time he felt himself strong enough to exile the queen-mother, to annihilate the queen- consort, and to send Bassompierre to the Bastille, where he expiated, till the car dinal's death, the unlucky breach of his dinner engagement. It must be confessed that Bichelieu had some little reason to suspect the marshal; and the imperious priest, who afterwards saw the heads even of the king's dearest favourites roll at his feet, probably thought that he was acting with great lenity in condemning Bas sompierre only to a perpetual imprisonment. The duplicity with which the cardinal appears to have subsequently behaved to the marshal, by flattering him with hopes of his release, — for ever renewed and for ever deceived, — is perhaps more disgusting than the original violence ; and we are wonder- struck at the mixture of meanness and im pudence with which Richelieu used, for his occasional purposes, to borrow from his vie LIFE OF BASSOMPIERRE. xvii tim a beautiful villa at Chaillot, upon which Bassompierre had employed all his taste and magnificence. While the unhappy owner was languishing on a truckle bed within four bare walls, the cardinal would send to ask permission to enjoy his luxurious couches and costly furniture : this was indeed adding insult to injury *. His death, however, restored the prisoner to liberty ; and the death of the king, and the succession of the queen-consort to the regency, recalled Bassompierre to the slip pery heights of court favour. He was now offered the honourable trust of being governor to the young king, Louis XIV. ; but age, and perhaps the severe but wholesome medicine of the Bastille, had cured him of ambition. He declined the

* This house was long an object of curiosity as well as its master. Evelyn says, " Dec. 5, 1643, the Earl of Norwich came to Paris as ambassador extraordinary ; I went to meet him in a coach and six horses at the palace of M. de Bassompierre, where I saw that gallant person, his gardens, terraces, and rare prospects." Mem. i. 34. Xviii SKETCH OF THE offer ; and in about three years followed his persecutor to the place " where the wicked cease to trouble, and where the weary are at rest." He died of an apoplexy at the house of his friend, the Duke of Vitry, in Champaigne, on the 12th ApriL 1646. He beguiled the tediousness of his prison by writing his Memoirs ; but hope and fear (commonly confounded in the plausible name of discretion,) forbad his writing them frankly ; and the wittiest man of his time has left behind him half a dozen of the dullest or at least of the driest of all volumes.. They are the work rather of a gazetteer than of a man of the world. Facts and dates are preserved, but motives and cha racters are lost. To the curious in this branch of literature the loss is irreparable and incalculable. It would require volumes of commentaries to supply ever so imper fectly what the marshal could have told in two words. He has left us but a skeleton, and no modern efforts can hope to restore LIFE OF BASSOMPIERRE. XIX to it the freshness or beauty of the living form. His works, however, are not without in terest, nor devoid of useful information; and though his drawing of the English court is a meagre outline, it seemed to me worth while to endeavour to fill it up with colours borrowed from his contemporaries. This is the whole of my pretension : in the following pages I am an editor, not an author. I may truly say, as the French man does of some anthology or bouquet of poetical flowers, " there is nothing of mine but the string which ties them." I have endeavoured in the translation to follow, as closely as I could, the loose and familiar style of the original. I could with less difficulty have made the language more correct, but I thought it better to exhibit my author as he himself chose to appear.

Bassompierre's works, without being ab solutely scarce, are uncommon. His Me XX SKETCH OF THE LIFE, &c. moirs were first published at Cologne in 1665, in two vols. 12mo., as were his Am- bassades, of which latter I have never seen but that edition in the British Museum. The Ambassades are still drier than the Memoirs, and contain a selection of de spatches and documents connected with the marshal's several embassies. I have, I be lieve, availed myself of all the .lights they afford to the subject of the English mission, and some of the more curious papers will be found at length in the Appendix. The copy of the Memoirs which I have used is the last and best edition of Amster dam, 1723, in 4 vols. 12mo. MEMOIRS

OF

MAESHAL DE BASSOMPIERRE'S

EMBASSY TO ENGLAND IN 1626.

Vol. III. Ed. 1723. PP. 285—315.

IN England they had turned away all the queen's (1) French attendants, and the priests too, except her confessor; which gave great displeasure to the king (of France) and the queen-mother, who wished the king to send me to England to set it all right :

(1) The treaty of marriage between Charles and Hen rietta was the most impolitic and disgraceful which Eng land ever made. I will say nothing of the too numerous and independent Roman catholic household allowed to the queen ; but, — that a foreign power should have been B 2 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

I did all 1 could to avoid it, having been so ill used in respect to my last embassy to

allowed to stipulate in favour of any class of our own sub jects — that the alteration or non-execution of our internal constitutional laws should have been promised in a foreign treaty; — that it should have been conceded that the royal offspring should be educated by Roman catholics till the age of thirteen; — and, finally, that such offspring, whatever faith they might profess, should succeed to the crown of these kingdoms, — are terms so monstrous, that Rapin inquires with wonder what could have induced the English court to accede to them; and he suggests three causes, James's avarice, vanity, and indifference to the Protestant religion. Mr. D'Israeli, in his inge nious and entertaining Curiosities of Literature, (iii. 404,) mentions, with just indignation, the treaty of dispensation between the French king and the pope, confirmatory of the treaty of marriage : he had found it in Bassompierre's AmbassadeSf and calls it " a remarkable and unnoticed document :" and, — under the favourable impression which Charles's subsequent conduct in this affair excites, — he wishes to exculpate him from all share in this obnoxious treaty; and adds, that, had it been known to Charles, " Henrietta would never have been permitted to ascend the throne." I wish I could subscribe to this defence of Charles's conduct; but, in candour, I cannot: Charles must have been aware of all the circumstances. The treaties of dispensation and marriage were both founded on the treaties prepared for the Spanish match, of which TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 3

Switzerland, in which they had curtailed me of half my employment to confer it upon the Marquis of Cceuvres ; but at last I was obliged to go.

there is abundant proof that he was not ignorant : and the treaty of marriage itself is just as bad as the treaty of dispensation ; in fact, there is little difference between them. I would also take the liberty of observing, that this treaty is so far from being " unnoticed" that Rapin gives us the substance and often the words of it, and details the whole previous negotiation at Rome. The best that can be said for Charles is, that his father made the treaty, and that he broke it : but the true ex planation of this disgraceful riddle is, that neither James nor Louis intended that the details of the treaty should be really carried into effect. This is hinted at by Hume (vi. 155.), who slurs over the whole affair in a strange way — it is intimated, in Charles's answer to Louis's first complaints on the Subject (Rymer, xviii. 223.) — and it is strongly admitted in the preliminary observation of Bas- sompierre, that " the misfortune was that the parties never thought of performing what they should promise, but only of promising what should bring about their present object.'" (Ambass. 3.) But without raking into the original in sincerity of the negotiation, the intolerable insolence of the French attendants was quite enough to justify their removal. It really requires the concurrent testimony of all writers to make us believe, that the Queen of England was forced by " those meddling priests" to walk in pe- B 2 4 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

The King of England sent Milord Carle- ton (2) to satisfy the king and queen with nance to Tyburn, and there on her knees, under the gibbet, glorify the blessed martyrs of the Gunpowder Plot. The most curious of the documents on this subject will be found in the Appendix.

(2) Milord Carleton. — Sir Dudley Carleton, created, May 22, 1626, Baron Carleton, of Imbercourt, afterwards Viscount Dorchester. He was the younger son of a gen tleman's family; had been a student of Christ Church, Oxford, and was early employed as secretary to Sir H. Neville, our ambassador in France. He was for a long time resident at Venice; and subsequently ambassador twice to Holland, and on this occasion to France. He was well acquainted with our foreign relations ; but, perhaps on account of his long residence abroad, he was con sidered as less conversant with our habits and constitution at home. On his return from his last embassy to Hol land, after James's death, he was sworn of the privy- council, and took an active part in the king's favour in the House of Commons; at which die majority took offence, and after his promotion to the peerage, embodied in one of their remonstrances a complaint of some ex pressions in one of his speeches, relative to certain " new councils which the king would be obliged to adopt ;" in which he seemed to threaten the English parliament with being reduced to what the French parliament was. — Kushworth, i. 400. Whitelock, 6. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 5

what he had done, who was very ill re ceived. The (French) court left Nantes to return to Paris. The King of England sent Mon taigu^) to congratulate Monsieur (Me king's brother) and Madame, on their marriage, as

The phrase which had been originally used by the king was sufficiently indiscreet, but Carleton's commentary upon it, if it had any real and precise meaning, was illegal and unconstitutional, and would seem to justify the opinion, that Carleton knew more of the constitution of foreign countries than of his own. He was secretary of state in 1628, in the room of Lord Conway ; and his letters in Winwood shew him to have been a man of observation and talents.

(3) Montaigu. — It is not easy to distinguish in Bas- sompierre's account, the several persons of the Montague family whom he mentions. One he frequently calls (as here) Montaigu; sometimes he talks of Viscount Man- deville, and once he mentions Lord Montague, President of (he Council. Now Sir Henry Montague was created Viscount Mandeville, and made President of the Council, 4th Dec. 1621 ; and was advanced to the Earldom of Man chester, 25 Feb. 162£. So that it is evident that Bassom- pierre has made at least one mistake ; and that in the latter instance, for Lord Montague, he should have said Earl of Manchester. — See note on his name hereafter. 6 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY well as the king and the (two) queens (mo ther and consort) ; but as he came to Paris

His eldest son was therefore now Lord Mandeville, more, if not better, known by the title of Kimbolton, by which during his father's life he was called up to the peers; a man who had the ambidextrous merit of being a promoter of the Rebellion and of the Restora tion. The person whom Bassompierre calls Montaigu was no doubt Walter Montague, the second son of Lord Manchester, for Howell calls the person sent on this errand to Paris " Master Montague!" — (Fam. Let. 194.) and Whitelock says (8.) that " Mr. "Walter Mon tague endeavoured to further the French war on the pretence of supporting the French Protestants? Montague, though ill received in France upon this oc casion, was but too well fitted for an ambassador to the French court ; indeed he was already more than half a Frenchman, and at a subsequent period became altogether one; for, notwithstanding what Whitelock says of his protestant zeal, he embraced the popish religion, — was one of the cabinet council of the queen-regent, Anne of Austria, — and finally became abbot of the rich abbey of Pontoise, where he spent the latter part of his life, and, I believe, died in 1670. His connexion with France did not, however, wean him from his natural allegiance, and he gave in a curious in stance In 1643, a personal the Count proof deof hisFertti loyalty. Senneterre, the French ambassador to England, was recalled at Charles's re- TO ENGLAND IN 1626. he was ordered to make the best of his way back ; and I was extraordinarily pressed to quest, as having too much connected himself with the parliamentary party ; and, at the queen's suggestion, M. de Harcourt was sent to replace him. Mr. Montague, charged with important personal communications to the king, came disguised as a Frenchman in the ambassador's train : " a disguise," says Clarendon, " which might easily conceal a person better known in France than in Eng land." The secret was known only to the ambassador, and it was hoped that Montague could not fail to reach Oxford, where the king then was ; but he was not twenty- four hours landed when he was arrested by a messenger from the parliament, and committed to the Tower. The ambassador made shew of resenting this insult, but in so lukewarm a way, that it was supposed that Mazarine was not displeased at removing Montague from the presence of both their sovereigns ; a lesson of court gratitude ; for Madame de Motteville informs us, that Montague's ad vice had great weight in inducing the queen to call Ma zarine to the ministry. (Motteville, i. 138. 146.) On the 12th March, 1648, Whitelock tells us that " Walter Montague (a prisoner) had leave from the parliament, on security, to go beyond seas." It seems that he loitered in England some months, probably for some loyal purpose, for in Sept. 1649, a vote was passed that he should quit the country in ten days, on pain of death and confiscation. — (Whit. 407.) After this wc find him for many years about, and employed

S 8 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY set out for England, which at last I was obliged to do. On Sunday the 27 Sept. this same year, 1626, I came and dined at Pontoise with the Cardinal of Kichelieu, when M. de Marillac, keeper of the seals, and Messrs. Schomberg and D'Herbault, were assembled to despatch the business I had to do ; and then I came on to sleep at Beauvais. I left it on the morrow, the 28th, and came to by, the French court, where the popish bigotry of this once zealous protestant became injurious to the in terests of Charles II. and there is reason to suppose that he contributed to the Duke of York's inclination to popery. I do not find the date of his collation to the abbey of Pontoise ; but in the memoirs of the reign of Louis XIV. we frequently hear of him, and of visits occasionally paid to " Milord Montaigu, abbe de Pontoise." The queen regent is said to have intended to call him to the head of affairs at the death of Mazarine, and to have endeavoured to make him a cardinal. (CEuvr. de Louis XIV. i. 79.) Certain it is that he enjoyed her favours to the end of her life, and was in spiritual attendance on her at her death. (Mem. de Mile, de Monpensier, v. 300.) Made moiselle calls him Esme de Montaigu. I cannot but suspect that his long continued friend ship with the French queen arose from his being the TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 9

Poix (4), and then to Abbeville the 29th, and to Boulogne (5) the 1st Oct. where I found my equipage, and those who were to accom- confidant of Ms friend Buckingham's strange intrigue with her. One is glad to think that it ended better than it began.

(4) Poix. — When the English visited France, after the first overthrow of Buonaparte, they were told and be lieved that the road from Abbeville to Beauvais, through Poix, had been made by Buonaparte when he had his camp at Boulogne, to avoid the circuitous way of Amiens. We see, in the text, that two hundred years ago Bassom- pierre travelled this very road; and any one who will consult Cassini's great maps will see that this road is there accurately laid down. Buonaparte repaired and widened a few miles of it, and thence, in his usual style, claimed the merit of the whole. I remember to have heard of a diplomatist of high rank, one, too, who had visited Paris before Napoleon's accession, but whose ideas were so dis ordered by the common cry of the wonderful public works performed by the Emperor! (heaven save the mark !) that he asserted and firmly believed that Napoleon had built the great gallery of the Louvre, through which Henry IV. had walked the morning' he was killed.

(5) Bassompierre, in one of his letters to Paris (Ambass.), excuses the slowness of his journey through Picardy, where the Swiss regiments were in garrison, by 10 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY pany me in this journey. M. D'Aumont, governor of Boulogne, feasted me. I em- saying, that he was so much pleased with their appearance that he forgot, in the character of their colonel-general, that of ambassador. This accounts for his delay in France ; for there is reason to think that travelling was, on the whole, nearly as expeditious then in that country as it is now. Bassompierre tells us, in another part of his Memoirs, that he and four friends went in a coach from Paris to Rouen in one day (between seventy and eighty miles) ; but this is mentioned as remarkable, and would be so at this day with such a coach ; and it is not easy to accomplish it even with one of our modern coaches. In England there can be little doubt that he travelled with private horses, and this will account for the slowness of his progress : travelling post in carriages was not then the practice ; though, in riding post, our ancestors did feats which we cannot rival. Sir Robert Cary, afterwards Earl of Monmouth, tells us himself, that when he carried the account of Queen Elizabeth's death to King James in Scotland, he rode from London to Edinburgh, 400 miles, in about 60 hours, a wonderful instance of celerity, even without considering his stops at Doncaster and Witherington (which latter, particularly, must have been of some hours), and a bad fall which he had at Norham. But even this is outdone by a worthy, of whom we read in Stow, who performed 144 miles by land, and two voyages by sea, of about twenty-two miles each, in seventeen hours. For so won- TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 11 barked on the morrow, the second day of October, and passed over to Dover, where I sojourned the next day to find conveyance for my suite. I came on Sunday, the 4th, to sleep at Cantorbery. Monday at Sitimborne. Tuesday, 6th, I passed Rocketer (6), where derful a story, I am inclined to let the honest chronicler vouch in his own words. " Saturday, the seaventeenth day of July, 1619, Ber nard Calvert, of Andover, about three a clock in the morning, towke horse at Saint Georges Church in South- warke, and came to Dover about seaven of the clocke the same morning, where a barge, with eight oares, formerly sent from London thither, attended his suddaine com- ming : he instantly towke barge, and went to Callice, and in the same barge returned back to Dover, about three of the clocke the same day, where, as well there as in divers other places, he had layed sundry swift horses, besides guides : he rode back from thence to S. George's Church in Southwarke the same evening, a little after eight a clock, fresh and lusty." (Stow, 1032.) All our modern match-riders must hide their dimi nished heads.

(6) Rocketer, Rochester. I have met somewhere, I think in Stow, a name of one of those " great ships,'' 12 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY the king's great ships of war lie, and came to sleep at Gravesende. Sir Lewis Lucnar (7), which is almost as pleasant as the combination of liberty and good cheer, in Goldoni's celebrated name of Lord Runny beef; and no doubt it was considered, in the loyal and pious time of good Queen Bess, a happy device, to call one of her majesty's first rates the "Elizabeth-Jonas:'''' though one does not exactly see why that prophet should have been chosen as a partner in this naval adventure.

(7) Sir Lewis Lucnar. — Sir Lewis Lewkenor, knt. In the year 1603 a new office was instituted, or, ra ther, revived, for the more solemn reception of ambas sadors, by the tide of Master of the Ceremonies, with a salary of 200/. per annum, of whom the first was Sir Lewis. (Stow, 824—1037. Rymer, xvi. 637. Rapin, ii. 161. note.) Sir Lewis's profits were not confined to his salary. When he was sent by the lords of the council to acquaint the foreign ministers with the false hood of a report of the king's death, which was spread on the morning of the 22d of March, 1605, the Spanish ambassador " was ravished with a soddaine joy, and gave unto Sir Lewis Lewkner a very great chaigne of golde, of a large value." (Stow, 882.) We learn from Win- wood, ii. 205, that the chain was of " six score pound." The Spanish court was in this reign very liberal of its bounties in England ; and the fashion of diplomatic pre sents, which was then carried to a great excess, afforded a colour and a cloak for such disgraceful practices. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 13 the conductor of ambassadors, came to meet me with the queen's barge, which she sent me.

" There was not one courtier of note" (says Sir A. Weldon, p. 27,) " who tasted not of Spain's bounty in gold or jewels, and not any in so large a proportion as the Countess of Suffolk; and in truth, Audley End, that famous structure, had its foundation in Spanish gold." As this is the first time I quote Sir Anthony Weldon, whom I shall have occasion to refer to frequently in the sequel, it is but fair to apprise my readers that I consider his testimony as very suspicious, and, when contra dicted, or even unsupported by others, entitled to little credit ; for, in addition to the internal evidence of a spirit of malice and scandal which his work displays, and to the proofs of the same kind of spirit adduced by his antagonist Aulicus Coquinariae, I must observe that his book was published in the most violent times of the commonwealth " by authority ,-" and I find, from Whitelock's multi tudinous collection of facts, that, a little before the king 's murder, the Parliament voted Sir Anthony 500/. for his activity against the Kentish rebels (royalists.) His zeal against kings and nobles would be naturally sharpened by such employment and favour from the republic : but pudet haec opprobria nobis Et dici potuisse et non potuisse refelli ! For, in this instance, there is but too much reason to give credit to the charge. Sully, a witness above all suspicion, tells us that he gave the king and the courtiers 14 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

Wednesday, 7th, I embarked on the Thames, and came by the warehouses for shipbuilding (8) of the East Indies, then by Grenwich (9), a house of the king's, near

60,000 crowns worth of presents, including 12,000 crowns in hard cash ; and a considerable part of this sum was " continued in pensions to English lords, to secure them in the French interest :" and, after his return, he states, that, by way of " counter-battery against the Spaniards, who set no bounds to their presents, the French court was obliged to imitate them, and even to give pensions to the most distinguished persons in the court of King James.'' Sully, Mem. iii. 144. 156.

(8) Warehouses for shipbuilding. — The edition of 1692, has magazin des contractations des Indes, that of 1723 contractions; but both are full of errors of the press, and I have no doubt it should be des constructions des Indes. The place alluded to is probably Blackwall, where, to this day, the East India docks exist.

(9) Every one knows that Greenwich was a royal palace, and a favourite residence of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. I have annexed a view of this once celebrated and now for gotten palace, which was called Placentia, from its agree able situation. In the Revolution it was greatly dilapidated, and on the Restoration, Charles II. began to repair it for a residence, but after the Revolution Queen Mary dedi cated it to the purposes to which it is now applied — purposes incomparably nobler than the edifices which our TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 15 which the Earl ofDorchet (10), Knight of the Garter (1 1), of the family ofHacfil (12), came

tawdry magnificence has erected, and which, soit dit en passant, seem to me as inconsistent with each other, as with.the use for which they have been erected. Adorning an hospital with Palladian prettinesses is like gilding a wooden leg.

(10) Dorchet. — Sir Edward Sacville, Earl of Dorset, (grandson to Lord Treasurer Buckhurst, son of Thomas created Earl of Dorset, chamberlain to the queen, (Stow, 893), a man of talents and honour, " of a very sharp dis cerning spirit, and of a most obliging nature; much ho nour, and great generosity ; and of a most entire fidelity to the crown." (Cla. i. 61.) The most remarkable cir cumstance of his life was his duel with the Lord Bruce, an instance hardly to be comprehended of generosity and ferocity. — It afforded the subject of a paper in the Guar dian, No. 129.

(11) It may here be worth remarking, that the star is but a comparatively modern addition to the decorations of knighthood. It was on St. George's day, in the year 1626, that, " in imitation of the order of the St. Esprit in France," the Knights of the Garter were permitted to add a star to their decorations. (Stow, 1042.) This species of ornament had its origin in the cross, properly so called, which the knights of the religious orders (as well as the clergy) wore on their outward garments. When Henry IV. was expiring, his attendants applied the cross of his 16 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

to speak to me from the king, and having made me get into the king's barge, brought me close to the Tower of London, where the king's carriages were waiting for me, which carried me to my lodgings, where the said Earl of Dorchet left me. I was neither lodged nor entertained at the king's expense (13), and they were scarcely able (14)

order to his lips instead of a crucifix, " putting him in mind of God." — (Bassom. i. 293.) It is curious to ob serve, that what was at first a mark of christian humility, has degenerated into one of the most ostentatious em blems of mundane vanity.

(12) Hacfil. — Sacville. — The word in the edition of 1692 is nearer to English, but further from the name — Hacfield.

(13) At the king's expense. — It had been usual to defray the charges of ambassadors extraordinary; and this is one of the heads of the king's expense, stated by the Earl of Salisbury to parliament in the year 1608. llapin says, (ii. 177,) that Sully states, that when he came to Eng land the king sent him word to Dover that he could not afford to bear the charges of the ambassadors, by reason of their numbers ; and refers to Sully's Memoirs as his authority. I find no such thing in the ordinary editions : and I suspect that Rapin was misled by Sully's complaint TO ENGLAND IN 162G. 17

to send this Earl of Dorchet, according to the usual custom, to receive me. How-

that he was not provided with horses and carriages at Dover ; but, then, he says that " Lewkener had promised to do so ;" and he afterwards distinctly states, that very handsome accommodation was provided for him in Lon don ; and that, on his return, " care was taken to fur nish him and his retinue with every thing they wanted for their journey, both by sea and land;" and, when Marshal de la Verdyne came ambassador, after the acces sion of Louis XIII., 1 61 0, he and his train were enter tained at the king's expense, and lodged in Lambeth Palace, which was especially and richly furnished by the king for the purpose. — Stow, 996.

(14) Scarcely able. — The difficulty, here alluded to, was not a pecuniary one, though the context might lead us to such a supposition. It has been too generally sup posed that Charles's exasperation against the queen's French domestics was feigned, or, if real, only prompted by Buckingham. Every new light thrown on this period of our history tends to vindicate the sincerity of Charles in this transaction. Buckingham was abroad, when the king was driven, by the audacity of the French, to the necessity of dismissing them : and that his resolu tion was taken without Buckingham's participation, and executed contrary to his advice, is proved by two curious letters which Mr. Seward (i. 304.) has printed from the originals in the British Museum, and which I have given in the Appendix ; and every line of Bassompierre's ac counts of his reception and negotiation show the fixed, c 18 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

ever, this did not prevent my being well lodged (15), furnished, and accommodated.

not to say obstinate determination of Charles to curb the insolence of the papists, and to reject the interference of France. It seems to have been with great difficulty that Charles was induced by his ministers to receive the am bassador at all.

(15) Well lodged. — It is to be regretted that he has not told us where he was lodged, and what he calls well lodged. If he had not elsewhere told us that it was a maison de Image, I should have thought that it was at the house of the permanent ambassador, or, as he was called in those days, ambassador leiger. In October, 1623, the ambassador leiger, Count de Tillier, lived at Hunsdon House, in the Blackfriars; in the garden of which were buried forty-seven of about 100 Roman catholics, who were killed by the falling of a floor in Hunflsdon House, where 800 of them were assembled to hear mass. (Stow, 1034.) This accident was called the fatal vespers. (Pennant, 229.) The protestants consi dered it as a judgment of heaven, and the Roman ca tholics as a treachery of the protestants ; both parties overlooking, in the blindness of bigotry, the weakness of an old floor, and the weight of the immoderate number of persons crowded upon it. I have not discovered whe ther there was an ambassador leiger here at this time ; but, from Bassompierre's silence, I should conclude that there was not. The Marquis de Blainville was in Lon don as ambassador in the preceding year. (Rymer, xviii. 223.) TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 19

The same evening, after I had supped, they came to tell the Chevalier de Jars (16),

(16) TheChevalier de Jars, afterwards better known by the advanced title of the Commandeur de Jars : he was, as Madame de Motteville (i. 62) says, " at this period in England in disgrace, where, however, he passed his time agreeably enough : Richelieu," she adds, " had re moved him from the queen (Anne of Austria), to whose party he was attached." When Richelieu wished to recon cile himself with the queen, he recalled de Jars, Madame de Chevreuse, and others of her friends : but on their re turn, their own cabals or the jealousy of the minister again occasioned their disgrace. De Jars was put into the Bas- tile, and only removed from it to be tried for his life at Tours. In passing through the court of the Bastile he saw his old friend Bassompierre, and some other prisoners of state, and he called out " to bid them farewell, and to assure them, that, whatever should become of him, he would be true to his friends and to himself." He con ducted himself, during his trial, with great firmness : but he was condemned to death, upon an engagement from Richelieu to the judges that the sentence should not be carried into effect : he was, however, brought out on the scaffold; and, just as he laid his head on the block, his pardon was announoed. It was observed, that he remained a long time stupefied, without the power of speaking, or the appearance of feeling. He was then banished into Italy ; but, after the death of Richelieu and of Louis XIII. Anne of Austria, now regent, recalled him, and he was one of the principal gentlemen of her private society. (Mad. de Motteville, i. 62. 165.) c 2 20 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY who had supped with me, that one was inquiring for him. It was the Duke of Boukinkarn (17) and Montaigu, who

This pardon on the scaffold reminds me of another remarkable one of the same period. Warrants were sent down into Hampshire, in December 1604, for the execu tions of the Lords Cobham and Grey, who were concerned in what is called Raleigh's plot. There seems to have been a great deal of mysterious and cruel juggle in the treatment of those unhappy noblemen at that dreadful moment. They were brought forth, and remanded, and brought forth again : in short, their agony was strangely protracted. They however passed through this ordeal with credit: Cobham particularly, who was a strange compound of knave and fool. It was expected that his behaviour on the scaffold would afford only matiire pour rire, to use the unfeeling phrase of Carleton ; but he behaved with such clear and collected courage, as to force from the same person the remarkable expression of " its being easier to die well than to live well. They looked," Carleton adds, " strange upon one another, like men be headed, and met again in the other world." (Hardwicke's State Papers, i. 391 )

(17) George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham of that line. All the transactions of his wonderful life and me lancholy death are so well known, that it is needless to repeat any of the circumstances. One cannot but remark, however, as an additional proof of the similarity which has existed between the TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 21 were come to see me alone, and without flambeaux, and begged him to introduce course of public events and the progress of manners in England and France, that the system of favouritism, — which so scandalously prevailed in the reign of James I. and was a fatal legacy to his successor, — reigned in France at the same period, with similar scandal, though not with such immediately fatal results. The character and circumstances of Louis XIII. and James I. had several points of resemblance — both the children of assassinated sovereigns, they both succeeded great princes whose capacity and glory only threw their successors into a deeper shade ; both well meaning and well informed, lovers of peace, and little prone to gallantry themselves, they were governed by a succession of fa vourites, loose, profligate, turbulent, and daring, who had no other recommendation to favour than youth and beauty, and hardly any other qualifications than expertness in hunting, and such sports and pastimes; and Luynes, and St. Simon, and Cinq-Mars, might form the parallels in a modern Plutarch, of Montgomery, Somerset, and Buck ingham. Happy it might have been for Charles, though perhaps not for the liberties of England, if the longer life of Cecil, or the earlier influence of Strafford, had afforded a fellow for Richelieu. Like causes produced like ef fects. The two monarchs left to their children dissensions with their parliaments, and their kingdoms in a state of* ferment, which soon burst into open rebellion : and twenty years of civil war and anarchy desolated the neighbouring nations. The vigour of the English character — the con sistency which the British constitution had already taken 22 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY them into my room by some private door, which he did; then came to fetch me. I was greatly surprised to see him (Buck ingham) there, because I knew he was at Hampton Cour with the king ; but he had come thence to see me. He began with making many complaints against France,

— the lights and rights of self-judgment, which the Re formation had introduced ; and perhaps the comparative narrowness of the stage on which the scene was acted, brought the affairs of the English monarchy to an earlier crisis: but what was deferred was not lost. — Circum stances peculiar to France, and the vigorous and mag nificent character of Louis XIV., turned the energies of his subjects into a new direction. But the seeds of change were sown in France: and it is not too much to say, that the recollections of the Fronde had some influence on the quarrels of Louis XV. with his parliaments, and that the endeavours of the latter to exercise and to extend their constitutional rights, led eventually, though unintentionally, to the catastrophe of Louis XVI., and completed the unhappy comparison which I have endeavoured, perhaps too fancifully, to sketch. The time consumed in their progress was different ; but the beginnings, the means, and the results, have a striking similarity. One word more. — Our restoration was, through the folly of James, followed by another revolution. Is it not to be apprehended that France will complete the pa rallel even to its last stage ? TO ENGLAND IN 1026. 23 then against me, with respect to certain persons (18), to which I answered the best I could ; and then made those of France against England, which he also excused the best manner he could ; and then promised me all manner of assistance and friendship, and I also returned ample offers of my ser vice to him. (He) begged me not to tell that

(18) Certain persons. — This either relates to Buck ingham's audacious folly with respect to the Queen of France, of which I shall say something hereafter, or to his personal differences with Richelieu. Mr. DTsraeli, in the third volume of his amusing and ingenious Curiosi ties of Literature, p. 448, tells us, from a manuscript of Gerbier's (see note on his name hereafter) in the British Museum, that Buckingham and Richelieu had a sharp difference upon a point which w,as formerly in France of great importance, the exchange of the title of Menu seigneur. The Cardinal addressed his letters to Mon sieur the Due de Buckingham, who retorted in his answer to Monsieur the Cardinal of Richelieu. This omission of the Monseigneur on both sides was a mortal offence. The proud but politic Cardinal felt it expedient to give up the point, which he did with a bad pun, " as to the force of the cannons of the British navy over the canons of the church." This difference was not, even in those puncti lious times, sufficient to occasion a war between the na tions,perating but the it may rival have favourites. conduced to it by personally exas^ 24 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY he had been to see me, because he had done it without the king's knowledge, which I did not believe. Thursday, the 8th. The ambassador Contarini, of Venice, came to visit me ; and towards night I went to see the Duke of Boukingkam at his residence called Jors- chaux (19), which is extremely fine, and

(19) Jorschaux. In this strange looking word one has some difficulty in recognizing York House, the residence of Buckingham. It stood a little to the east of Hunger- ford market. It had belonged to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; but in the reign of Queen Mary, Heath, Archbishop of York, purchased it for the see ; whence the name, which so perplexed Bassompierre, and which is still preserved in York Stairs (at the end of Buckingham- street), which was the water entrance of the palace. In the reign of James I., Toby Matthews, Archbishop of York, exchanged it with the crown, and the Lord Chan cellors Egerton and Bacon had it probably as an official residence. It was afterwards granted to the Duke of Buckingham, who made it a magnificent house. In the rebellion, the Parliament gave it to Lord Fairfax, whose daughter and heiress marrying the second Duke of Buckingham, (son of the favourite) it devolved to him ; who lived there after the Restoration. On his disposal of it, several streets were laid out on the site of the house and gardens, which are still collectively called York TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 25 was the most richly fitted up than any other I saw (20). We parted very good friends. . buildings, though the name and title of the last possessor is preserved in George, Villiers, Duke, and Buckingham streets, and even the particle of, adds Pennant, is not for gotten, being preserved in Of-Alley. The beautiful water gate called York Stairs was built by Inigo Jones. I am rather surprised to find Howell, so late as Fe bruary 1626-7, advising Buckingham to have a regular town residence. "It were not amiss that your Grace would settle a standing mansion house and family, that suitors may know whither to repair constantly ; and that your servants, every one in his place, might know what belongs to his place, and attend accordingly." — See more on this subject in a note on Wallingford House. Lodge states, (iii. 323,) that there was some imputation on Archbishop Matthews for having alienated York House to the Duke of Buckingham in 1662, for an in adequate consideration : yet he states, just after, that the archbishop died in 1628 ; and we have already seen that the house was granted to the crown even before the first Duke of Bucks was heard of.

(20) It does some credit to the taste at least of the English court at that period, that Bassompierre, himself a man of distinguished taste in decoration and furniture (he nearly ruined himself by fitting up that celebrated house at Chaillot, which his gaoler Richelieu used to borrow), and who had seen all the courts in Europe, should consider this as the finest and best fitted house he had ever seen. 26 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

Friday the 9th. In the morning Sir Lewis Lucnar came to me on behalf of the King, to signify his commands (21) to send back to France Father Sancy of the Oratory, whom I had brought with me. This, I ab solutely refused, saying, "that he was my confessor, and that the King had nothing to do with my family ; that, if I was not agree able to him, I would leave his kingdom and return to my master." And, a little after, the Duke of Boukenkam, and the Earls of Dorchet and (22) Salisbury, came to dine

(21) To sendback. — This is anotherproof of the jealousy which Charles entertained of this embassy ; and we shall see, by and by, that this step (a strong one it must be confessed) was not unjustifiable. Nay it was one which Bassompierre tells us that he had himself foreseen before he left France ; and it was in spite of his remonstrances that Sancy was forced by the king and queen-mother into his train. Why this man was so peculiarly agreeable to one court, and so peculiarly offensive to the other, I have not been able to discover.

(22) Salisbury. William Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, son of Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, and grandson .of Thpmas Lord Burleigh. His father had been Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth and King James. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 27 with me; to whom I complained. After dinner, the Earl of (23) Montgomery, Great

Sir Robert Cecil served the Queen with ability and fidelity ; but he had also an eye to the rising sun, and was in correspondence with James during the latter years of his reign. Next to, or perhaps even before, her personal vanity, Elizabeth's ruling passion was jealousy of her successor; and if she had suspected Cecil of tampering with James, it may well be supposed that she would have wreaked her violent indignation upon him. He had on one occasion a very narrow escape while riding in the Queen's coach, (an indul gence to the ease of her latter years) on Blackheath ; the post from Scotland passed, and the Queen, always anxious on the subject of Scotland, commanded the Secre tary to stop him, and open the despatches in her presence. Cecil's presence of mind saved him ; he gained some time by sending for a knife to cut open the cord that tied the despatches, and this gave him time to recollect that the Queen hated ill-smells, and feared contagion, even more than she loved Scotch news; he affected to perceive an unsavory smell, which induced her Highness to order him and the tainted despatches out of her sight. He was the inventor of the scheme of raising money by the creation of baronets, a cheapening of honours much improved upon in the beginning of Charles's reign ; when, by proclamation, every gentleman of 40/. a year was called in to be knighted. This arbitrary " buckling of honour on folk's backs" reminds me of the pleasantry of Admiral Payne, who, in our own times, when some• 28 BASSOMP1ERRES EMBASSY

Chamberlain, came to visit me, and to press me on the part of the King to send away one told him he was to be knighted, exclaimed, with affected indignation, "no, no, by G — , not without a court martial." Salisbury died (as Weldon tells us, with malicious detail) when his favour was on the decline, and in most afflicting circumstances, on a mole-hill by the road side, on his return from Bath. (Weld. p. 1 4.) The answer to Sir Anthony denies that he died on the road, (as if that circumstance could tarnish the reputation of Salisbury) and carefully assures us, that, finding him self extremely ill, the old earl got out of his litter, and went in his coach " to die at St. Margaret's, the house of that worthy gentleman, Mr. Daniel, in May 1612." Aul. Coq. 63. (See Appendix.) His son William, mentioned in the text, was a very different man ; and, though his life and his death were (in the opinion of such persons as Weldon) more ho nourable than his father's, — for he joined in the rebel lion, and died on his own bed, — his life was very un worthy such a parent. He was the most obsequious of the courtiers of James and Charles, and always inclined to the most violent councils and ready for the most de spotic measures ; but he had as little honour as justice, and as little loyalty as patriotism ; for, when Charles's affairs (which he had assisted to push to extremities) began to look desperate, he abandoned his master, and hastened with cowardly expedition to join his enemies, and never after refused to do any work that was required of him by TO ENGLAND IN 162G. 29

Father Sancy, to whom I made the same answer which I had made to Lucnar. Af-

the predominant faction ; and when Cromwell put down the House of Peers, he had the meanness to procure him self to be elected into the House of Commons, and sat with them as of their own body, " and was," as Clarendon emphatically adds, " esteemed accordingly.'" Clar. ii. 209.

(23) Montgomery. Philip Herbert, Earl of Mont gomery, Lord Chamberlain, second son of Henry Earl of Pembroke and his celebrated Countess. In October 1 604, he was privately contracted without the knowledge of friends on either side, to Lady Susan Vere, daughter of Edward, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, by a daughter of Lord Burleigh, and a marriage was afterwards celebrated with great pomp at the Cockpit be fore the whole Court. The account which Sir Dudley Carleton gives to Sir Ralph Winwood of this ceremony is curious, and characteristic of the court of King James ; but as it is long, and has been often reprinted, I shall only quote one passage. The happy couple " were lodged in the councill-chamber, where the king, in his shirt and nightgown, gave them a reveille matin before they were up, and spent a good time in or uponthe bed — chuse which you will believe. No ceremony was omitted of bride cakes, points, garters, and gloves, which have been ever since the livery of the court; and at night there was sewing into the sheet, casting off the bride's left hose, with many other petty sorceries." Win. ii. 43. He was shortly afterwards, 4th June, 3 James I., 30 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY terwards the ambassador of the King of Danemark, and the agent of the King of

created Earl of Montgomery. Rowland White preserves part of a song in honour of the success and expertness of him and his noble brother in the knightly amusements of that day. Lodge, iii. 291. TheDoe carryHerberts, away every Cockpit day,

The gold and the glory of the day. It was, however, only in the splendid and peaceable sports of the Cock-pit, that this favourite was destined to shine. Walpole calls him a memorable simpleton (R. and N. A. 485) ; Butler delighted to lavish his satire upon him: and he certainly does not seem to have shared, in any way, the high-minded gallantry of his house. Osborn says, that he was publicly horsewhipped at Croydon races; " but Herbert not offering to strike again, there was nothing spilt but the reputation of a gentleman, in lieu of which, if I am not mistaken, King James made him a knight, baron, viscount, and earl, in one day." If we were to judge of the truth of this whole story, by Osborn's accuracy in those particulars of which we are informed, we should not give any great credit to it ; for Herbert was a knight a considerable time before he was a peer, and never was a viscount at all. There is no doubt, however, that in 1610, Mont gomery had a dispute with Lord Southampton in a tennis- court, which came to blows ; (" the rackets flew about their ears") but the king compounded the matter without TO ENGLAND IN 162C. 31

Bohemia, came to visit me, and Montaigu came to sup with me. bloodshed. As Montgomery was a. favourite " en titre,"" the greater share of the disgrace of the king's inter vention may be justly laid to his account. It seems that Montgomery had the equal ill luck of getting fre quently into those kind of disputes, and badly out of them ; for in 1641, when we might expect to find him more sedate, his indiscretion and insolence involved him in a dispute with Lord Mowbray, eldest son of Lord Arundel, which, " from angry and disdainful words, came to an attempt at blows.'' How this affair ended, in point oflwmour, we are not informed ; but we may conclude, not to the ad vantage of Montgomery, for Clarendon calls it a miscar riage on his part, and he was, in consequence, dismissed from the office of great chamberlain, in addition to the punishment, which he shared with his antagonist, of being sent to the Tower; and, finally, the baseness of his conduct in the civil wars to the son of his first benefactor (himself a great benefactor also), gives but too much colour to the other imputations on his character. All writers, except Peyton, who (365) honours his po litical apostacy, concur in representing Montgomery as choleric, boisterous, illiterate, selfish, absurd, and cow ardly; a profligate, a gambler, a cruel despot to his miserable wife, and an ungrateful rebel to his unhappy sovereign. (Butler, Osborn, Gilpin, W. Scott, Walpole, Peerage, &c.) On the other hand, it is but candid to confess that there is reason to hope that Montgomery (as is proverbially said of a still greater offender) was not quite so black as 32 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

On the morrow, Sir Edward Cecile, Vis count Hamilton (24), whom I had known

he is painted. His wife, who was on the worst terms with him, and whose pencil was by no means a flattering one, says, that " though he was no scholar at all to speak of, he was of a very quick apprehension, a sharp under standing, very crafty withal, and of a discerning spirit. He was one of the greatest noblemen of his time in all respects, and was throughout the reign very well be loved." And it ought never to be forgotten that he was one of the first, the steadiest, and most powerful patrons of Shakespeare, to whom, with his admirable brother, William, Earl of Pembroke, Heminge and Condell de dicated the first folio, " as the most noble and incom parable pair of brothers, who having prosequuted these triffles (the immortal plays), and their authour living with so much favour, would use a like indulgence towards them which they had done unto their parent." Horace Walpole, who calls Montgomery a memorable simpleton, seems delighted at not being obliged to admit him into his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors ; but, after all, this testimony of his early taste for Shakespeare gives him a higher literary character than half the noble scribblers who figure in that gallery of high-born me diocrity. His ingratitude and disloyalty to Charles are un pardonable; but while we detest the baseness, let us not forget the provocation. Lord Clarendon (no random censurer of the king) says, that Charles, who had been long incensed at the carriage of TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 33

very young in Italy, and who had 33 years (25) ago done me great courtesies in England, came to visit me.

the earl, took advantage of his miscarriage in the affair with Lord Mowbray to take the staff of chamberlain from him, which he had held for twenty years. This conduct of the king's was not generous, and it was followed by the insult to Montgomery, to all his loyal friends, and to himself, of giving the staff to the Earl of Essex. This$ I repeat it, is no excuse for Montgomery's subsequent desertion, but in that dark time of treason and treachery of all sorts, few that abandoned the unhappy king had so much of an apology. With respect to his domestic quarrel with his lady, I dare say that it had not the singular qualification of having the faults all on one side. She was, as Walpole calls her, a high-born and high-spirited lady;- but her famous answer to Sir J. Williamson, Charles II.'s secre tary of state, when he wrote to recommend a member for her borough of Appleby, exhibits a style and temper, which, however we may admire them in a political heroine, were not the best fitted for connubial felicity. In one word, Montgomery was, at different periods of his life, a favourite and a rebel; and a character having two such odious and prominent features was sure to be blackened in its smallest details by the antipathies of both parties.

(24) Hamilton. — This title, which the different editions of Bassompierre call Hamilton, Wemelton, or Semilton, was, in truth, Wimbledon. Edward Cecil was the third son D 34 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

Sunday the 11th. — The Earl of Car lisle (26) came with the king's coaches to

of Thomas, Earl of Exeter, son of Lord Burleigh, and born in 1571. He was created 9 Nov. 1625, Baron Cecil, of Put ney (R. xviii. 625.), and in July following Viscount Wim bledon (the manor of Wimbledon belonging to him) ; and sent in command of a fleet against Spain in the first year of Charles I. This fleet was of eighty sail of vessels, with ten regiments on board; after a fruitless landing near Cales (Cadiz), and a disgraceful re-embarkation, the fleet returned to England with contagion on board, to the great indignation of all men, and to the great injury of Buckingham's credit, who, not only as high-admiral, but as prime adviser of the king, was held responsible for the whole of this failure. Howell, in his letter of advice to Buckingham, 13th Feb. 1626, notices this failure and its consequences as a proof of the policy of the Duke's resigning the charge of lord high-admiral (p. 187.) Lord Wimbledon was thrice married: his last wife, Diana Drury (see note 44), survived him, he dying in 1638, and she, after a widowhood of more than half a century, in 1691- *\^i WU

(25) The marshal, or his printer, makes a mistake of near ten years — it was in 1601 that Bassompierre was in England.

(26) Earl of Carlisle. — James Hay, a young Scottish gentleman of good family, who did not, it would seem, exactly accompany (as Lodge and Clarendon intimate) James into England, but who hastened over from Paris TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 35 fetch me to Hampton Court, into a room where there was a handsome collation.

(Weldon, 18.) on the news of his accession, to offer himself to the kind looks and substantial favours, which he supposed were to be showered down upon his coun trymen. He was one of the few who were not dis appointed. His air, his manners, and his gay and genteel extravagance, captivated the susceptible heart of James ; and as no monarch seems to have better understood the bis dat qui cito dot, he made haste to distinguish him; first by knighthood, and then by a most anomalous kind of peerage, granting him the name and title of Lord Hay, with precedence next to the barons of Scotland, but with out a seat or vote in parliament ; and, what was also al most a grant from the king, he married, through the king's mediation (" for his majesty was in this office a most prevalent prince" Cla. i. 61.), the rich heiress of the house of Denny. To this were added several court preferments and honours, and he was successively created an English baron, Viscount Doncaster, and finally Earl of Carlisle. He had a grant of the island of Barbadoes, which, on the death of his son without issue, passed to his cousin, who was successively created Lord Hay, Vis count Dupplin, and Earl of Kinnoul, in Scotland. Weldon tells us, that Carlisle's first favour arose from a most strange and costly feast which he gave the king ; and throughout his whole life he was remarkable for the magnificence of his entertainments, in which jovial way he spent 400,000/. (which, says Weldon, it is strictly computed that he received from the crown, but which to me seems an incredible sum for those days), without leaving a house or an acre of land to be remembered by : D % 36 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

The Duke of Boukinkam came to introduce me to the audience, and told me that the his son inheriting only his mother's property. (Wood's Peerage, ii, 45.) One of his luxurious modes of spending the king's bounty — which, it must be owned, he seemed to do according to the intention of thefounder — is worth recording. It was not enough for his ambition that his suppers should please the taste alone, the eye also must be gratified; and this was his device. The company was ushered in to a table covered with the most elegant art and the greatest profusion, all that the silversmith, the shewer, the confectioner, or the cook, could produce. While the company was examining and admiring this delicate display, ,the viands of course grew cold, and unfit for such choice palates. The whole, therefore, — called the ante-supper, — was suddenly removed, and another supper, quite hot, and containing the exact duplicate of the former, was served in its place. — (Weldon, 271. Lodge, ii. 45.) Osborne says, that at a feast made by this Scottish Heliogabalus, one of the king's attendants eat "to his own share a pie, which cost ten pounds of the money of that day. A bon vivant's envy of the happy servant to whose lot this pie fell will be somewhat diminished, when he reads that it was composed " of ambergrease, magesterial of pearl, musk," and such like ingredients. His taste in dress was as costly as his palate. Old Wilson thinks it not beneath the dignity of history to detail the materials and fashion of " one of the meanest of his suites, which was, nevertheless, so fine as to look like romance, and savour rather of fancy than reality," 93. When he journeyed into Holland his generosity paid TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 37 king desired to know beforehand what I purposed saying to him, and that he (the king) would not have me speak to him about any business ; that otherwise he would not give me audience. I said to him that the king should know what I had to say to him from my own mouth, and that it was not the custom to limit an ambassador in

the innkeepers of the road he did not travel, because they might (unknowing his route) have made preparation for him ; and when he made his entry into the French capital his horse was loosely shod with silver, so that at each curvet he cast his valuable shoes about, and a silversmith was at hand to " take others out of a tawny velvet bag and tack them on, to last till he should come to another occasion to prance and cast them off." (Wil. 153. 94.) It is the nature of man to be. dazzled and conciliated by liberality and even prodigality. A thousand pounds given to a griping favourite would have rendered him odious ; but Carlisle was beloved, admired, and applauded in his gigantic profusion. He was twice or thrice ambassador extraordinary to the Emperor and the King of France, for which employ ments his magnificence, his good sense and shrewdness, and his knowledge of foreign manners, eminently qualified him. He however never took much part in political affairs. In them he was sure to find rivals, enemies, and vexations ; he therefore addicted himself to feasting and dressing, in which he shone without a competitor, and 38 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY what he had to represent to the sovereign to whom he was sent, and that if he did not wish to see me I was ready to go back again. He swore to me that the only reason which obliged him (the king) to this, and which made him insist upon it, was, that he could not help putting himself into a passion in treating the matters about which I had to speak to him, which would not be decent in the chair of state, in sight of the chief persons of the kingdom, both men and women ; that the queen, his wife, was close to him, who, incensed at the dis missal of her servants, might commit some extravagance, and cry, in sight of every body (27). In short, that he would not flattered himself that his occupations were as pleasant and more innocent. This extraordinary man died in 1636, having married as his second wife, Lucy, daughter of the Earl of North umberland.

(27) This was no diplomatic pretext. We learn, from the despatches in the Ambassades, that Charles's fears of a scene were very near being realised. The queen at the audience was exceedingly affected, and " retired with Madame de Trimoiiille nearly in tears." Charles's whole conduct in this affair clears him from the imputation of tame uxoriousness which has been with TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 39

commit himself in public ; and that he was sooner resolved to break up this audience,

so much industrious malice thrown upon him ; and in the fuller details of conferences, given in the Ambassades, his firmness is still more apparent than in this hasty journal. Mr. D'Israeli has an interesting chapter on the charac ters of the queen and of Charles in relation to her. (Cur. of Lit. iii. 398.) She was a lively, warm, volatile woman, but possessing none of the haughtier and more austere energies which could subdue such a mind and temper as Charles's. Walpole, in his unpoetical epistle to Asheton, tells him

" Of lustful Henrietta's Romish shade."

Walpole, on all occasions, seems actuated by the deepest hatred of Charles and his queen, and in this instance his accusation seems unjustifiable. That in the scandalous and rebellious times in which she lived some libellers attacked the unhappy queen's reputation, is certain ; but it is equally certain that most of their accusations were utterly false, and, for the rest, there were probably no other grounds than the vivacity and gaiety natural to the queen's age and country. Without entering into the de tails of that discussion, I will only say, that her energetic affection to Charles in his distress, and his constant and cordial confidence in her, redeem, in my mind, the little female frowardness and courtly levities of her earlier days. I must not conceal, that, after the king's death, it was suspected, at the court of France, that,

" Non servata fides, cineri promissa Sichaeo," 40 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY and grant me one in private, than to treat with me concerning any business before every body. He (the duke) swore vehemently to me, that he told me the truth, and that he had not been able to induce the king to see me otherwise; begging of me even to suggest some expedient, and that I would oblige him. I (who saw that I was going to re-

she was privately married to Lord Jermyn — a lamentable frailty, I allow ; — but one which, considering what passes under our own eyes every day, may be pitied, and for which, at least, it is unjust to render the character of her martyred husband responsible. Of Walpole's unaccountable malignity to Charles, which breaks out on a thousand occasions, I will select one instance, in which he makes a parody, as dull as it is indecent, of the religious conference between the king and Bishop Juxon on the fatal scaffold. He says, in one of his letters, of a woman of loose character, that she will " probably give into a more comfortable pursuit, and like a print I have seen of that blessed martyr, Charles, abandon the hunt of a corruptible for that of an incor ruptible crown." (Orford's Works, v. 472.) And, won derful to say, the correspondent to whom he addresses this disgusting trash is Wentworth, Earl qf Strafford! Walpole's heart is known to have been hard, but we should hardly have expected to find him playing the jack pudding on a bloody scaffold, TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 41 ceive this affront, and that he asked me to assist him with my advice, and to avoid the one, and to insinuate myself more and more into his good graces by the other,) told him, that I could not in any manner whatsoever do any thing but what was prescribed to me by my master; but that, since, as my friend, he asked my advice as to some expe dient, I told him that it depended on the king to give or to take away, to shorten or to lengthen the audience in what manner he would, and that he might (after having allowed me to make him my bow, and re ceived, with the king's letters, my first compliments, when I should come to open to him the occasion of my coming,) inter rupt me, and say, " Sir, you are come from London, and you have to return thither ; it is late ; this matter requires a longer time than I could now give you. I shall send for you one of these days at an earlier hour, and we will confer about it at our leisure in a private audience. In the meanwhile I shall satisfy myself with having seen you, and heard of the king, my brother-in-law, and the queen, my mother-in-law; and I will not delay the impatience which the 42 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

queen, my wife, has to hear of them also from you." Upon which I shall take my leave of him, to go make my bow to the queen. After I had told him this, the duke (28) embraced me, and said, " You know more of these things than we ; I have offered you my assistance in the affair you are come to negotiate, but now I recall the promise I gave you, for you can do very well without me;" and so left me, laughing, to go and tell the king this expedient, who accepted it, and punctually observed it. The duke returned to introduce me to the audience, and the Earl of Carlisle walked behind him. I found the king on a stage raised two steps, the queen and he in two chairs, who rose at the first bow I made them on coming in. The company was magnificent, and the order exquisite. I made my compliment to the king, gave

(28) It is worth observing, that on all occasions Buck ingham appears anxious to accommodate the differences which existed, and that the difficulties arose from the feelings of the king himself. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 43 him my letters, and after having said my words of civility, as I was proceeding to those of business, he interrupted me in the same form as I had proposed to the duke. I then saw the queen, to whom I said little, because she told me that the king had given her leave to go to London, where she could see me at leisure. Then I with drew. Then the dukes (29) and principal lords came to conduct me to my coach; and, as the duke was talking to me expressly to give the secretary (SO) time to catch

(29) There was at this period but one English duke, viz. Buckingham ; therefore Bassompierre is justified in calling him, as he often does, the Duke : there was, how ever, a Scotch duke, of Lennox, at court ; but, as he was only fourteen years old, it is probable that Bassompierre, by the word dukes, in the plural, does not mean these two dukes, but the great peers who were in attendance ; and whom, after the fashion of France, (where there were no peers who were not dukes), he calls by this title.

(30) There were two secretaries of state at this time, Edward, Lord Conway, and Sir John Coke. It is, I presume, by mistake, that in Rymer, xviii. 786, Sir Thomas Savage is designated as secretary of state, as Conway and Coke bear the title in documents immediately prior and posterior to that period. Conway, it would 44 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY me, the said secretary arrived, who told me that the king informed me, that, although he had promised me a private audience, he nevertheless would not give me one until I should send back Father Sancy to France ; as he had before desired me to do three times without effect, at which his majesty felt himself offended. I answered, that, if it were consistent with either my duty or decency to obey him, I should have done so at the first word ; and that I had no other answers to give than in conformity to those I had already given, with which I thought he ought to be satisfied ; and that his majesty should content himself with the

seem, was particularly charged with Bassompierre's mission. Up to James's reign there was but one secretary of state ; but, on the resignation (Aul. Coq. says the death of Cecil, Earl of Salisbury), there were two created, as if no one man could supply the place of that able mi nister. This reminds me of the promotion of eight mar shals of France, on the death of Turenne ; a great com pliment to his memory, which Madame de Cornuel pleasantly explained by calling the eight new marshals " change for M. de Turenne." TO ENGLAND IN 1620. 45 respect which I paid him, of keeping shut up in my house one of my domestics, who was neither guilty, nor condemned, nor accused ; who, I could promise, should neither act, nor speak, nor even show him self either at court or in the city of Lon don, but remain in my own house while I should be there, and not leave it before I myself did ; which I will do to-morrow, if he orders it : and, if he will not give me an audience, I shall send to the king my master, to know what he pleases I should ask after that refusal ; who will not, in my opinion, allow me to grow old in England, waiting till the king takes a fancy, or finds leisure to hear me (31). Which I said loud enough, and not at

(31) This strong language of Bassompierre's was per fectly justifiable, as the English minister could not, or at least did not, produce any specific ground of complaint against Sancy ; but Bassompierre confesses that he found the English as proud and haughty as he could be. " I have received," says he, with serious pleasantry, " con descension from the Spaniards, and civility from the Swiss, but I have never been able to overcome the arrogance of the English." (Ambass.) 46 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY all moved, in order that the bystanders might hear me. I then expressed more resentment towards the duke, whom I begged to let me hear no more of this affair, about which I had made up my mind, unless they would give me an order to leave London and the island directly, which I should receive with joy : and upon that I left the company with the Earl of Carlisle and Montaigne, who brought me back to London, and stopped to sup with me. Monday, the 12th. The ambassador of the States (of Holland) came to visit me; and I was to return the visits of the am bassadors of Danemark and Venice. I then went to pay my respects to Madame de la Trimouille (32), the Duke of Boukinkam,

(32) The Duchess of Trimouille. Charlotte, Duchess of Trimouille, wife of Claude, second Duke of Trimouille, was daughter of William, second Prince of Orange, and Charlotte de Bourbon Monpensier (Moreri); and her daughter — matre pulcra, Jilia pulcrior — Charlotte was married to Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby. (See note 46.) TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 47

and Montaigu, who supped with me. After supper I conversed at length with him (the •duke) about my business. Tuesday, the 13th of October, the queen came to London, and sent for me by Goring (33), with whom I went to her at

(33) Goring. Sir George Goring, vice-chamberlain to the queen, created Earl of Norwich in 1644. In the troublesome times which ensued, he adhered to the royal cause ; and when, after the king's death, he was found guilty, with the Earl of Holland, for having borne arms against the Parliament, and pardoned in the House of Commons by the casting vote of the Speaker, it was observed, that he, who had always adhered steadily to the king, was spared, while Holland, " who was full of courtship to all sorts of persons, and readiness to stand up for the rights of the people,'" was, without question, handed over to the executioner — " a caution," as White- locke observes, " to the affectation of popularity," (p. 379.) Goring's defence, however, it must be confessed, was not so manly and generous as we might wish. He repre sented " that he had been educated in the Court from his cradle, having been a page to King James I.; that he had never served any other master but the king, whom he followed, without examining the justice or injustice of his cause, not having had opportunities to be informed in such points, which were above his capacity." (Rap. ii. 551. 574. Clar. iii. 118. 205.) 48 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY her palace at Sommerset. Afterwards I was to see - the duke at Jorschau (York House.)

If we are to believe Wilson (104), and Weldon (92), Goring's employment about the old king was but a bad school for the tragic scenes which he was destined after wards to play. " Then began the king to eate abroad, who formerly used to eat in his bed-chamber ; or if, by chance, supped in his bedchamber, would come forth to see the pastimes and fooleries in which Sir Ed. Zouch, Sir George Goring, and Sir John Finnet, were the chief and master fools ; and surely this fooling got them more than any others wisdom far above them in desert. Zouch, his part to sing indecent songs and tel obscene tales ; Finnet to compose these songs. There were a set of fiddlers brought up on purpose for this fooling, and Goring was the master of the game for fooleries — sometimes presenting David Droman, and Archie Armstrong, the king's foole, on the back of the other fools, to tilt one at another, till they fell together by the eares : sometimes antic dances ; but Sir John Millisent, who was never known before, was com mended for notable fooling, and so was the best extem porary fool of them all." We learn, however, from better authority than Weldon 's, namely, the account of a pic-nic entertainment in a letter of Mainwaring's to Lord Arundel (Lodge, hi. 403), that Goring had really a turn to this kind of buffoonery. " The prince his birth-day has been solemnised heare by the few marquesses and lords which found themselves TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 49

Wednesday, the 14th, I was to take leave of Madame de la Trimouille (34). Then Kobert Fery (35) came to see me, and afterwards the ambassador of Bethlem heare ; and (to supply the want of lords) knights and squires were admitted to a consultation, wherein it was resolved that such a number should meet at Gamiges, and bring every man his dish of meat. It was left to their own choice what to bring : some chose to be sub stantial — some curious — some extravagant. Sir George Goring's invention bore away the bell ; and that was four huge brawney pigges, pipeing hot, bitted and harnessed with ropes of sarsiges, all tied to a monstrous bag pud ding. 22 Nov. 1618.""

(34) She was returning to France. (Ambass.)

(35) Robert Fery. I know not what to make of this name. I suspected a mistake for Robert Cary : and the change is not greater than Bassompierre very commonly makes ; but I cannot find even an appropriate Robert Cary. Robert Cary, Earl of Monmouth, had two sons, Henry and Thomas ; the former he calls his oldest and the latter his younger son : this is not inconsistent with his having had a son between both, who might have been our Ro bert : but it is not probable. A Thomas Kery was clerk of the privy seal in 1590 (3 Lodge, 12); but it does not appear that he left any son. I can find no other name at all similar ; and I am afraid, therefore, our cu riosity about Robert Fery must remain unsatisfied. E 50 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

Gabor (36), with the agent of the King of Bohemia (37). Finally, Montaigu came to tell me from the duke, that although I still kept Father Sancy with me, the king would, nevertheless, give me an audience on the morrow, which was

(36) Bethlem Gabor. — Properly Gabriel Bethlem, was the son of a gentleman of Transylvania, of noble birth, but no fortune, who ingratiated himself with Gabriel Bathori, Prince of Transylvania, to a degree which enabled him afterwards to depose his benefactor, and proclaim himself Prince of Transylvania and King of Hungary. The latter of which titles, after a great variety of fortune, he ceded by treaty in 1624. This remarkable adventurer married the daughter of the Elector of Brandenburg, and died in 1629, immensely rich. He bequeathed the Em peror Ferdinand 40,000 ducats, and a horse, with a saddle worth a thousand horses, for it was almost a cabinet of jewels. (Moreri.) Christian IV. King of Denmark, brother-in-law to James I., married, I believe, another of the daughters of the Marquis-elector of Brandenburg. So that Bethlem was now connected with the royal houses of England and Denmark. In a letter in the British Museum, from Prince Gabriel to the Duke of Buckingham, introducing his nephew, Count Peter, then travelling in England, the family name is spelled Bethlen.

(87) King of Bohemia. — The Prince Palatine, the TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 51

Thursday the 15th, on which the Earl of Britswater (38) came with the king's coaches to fetch me to Hampton Court; then the duke shewed me into a gallery, where the king was waiting for me, who gave me a long audience and well disputed. He put himself into a great passion (39), and king's brother-in-law, who assumed the title of King of Bohemia; from him and his queen are descended the royal house of England, by their grand-daughter, the Electress Sophia.

(38) Britswater. — John Egerton, Viscount Brackley, created, May, 1617, Earl of Bridgewater, son of Lord Chancellor Egerton. On his being appointed lord-pre sident of the Marches of Wales in 1633, Milton enlivened and immortalized the festivities with his Masque of Co- mus, of which the chief characters were played by the earl's children.

(39) In the Ambassades we find some details of this stormy interview. " I was treated," says Bassompierre, " with great rudeness ; and found in the king very little desire to oblige my master." Charles complained of the intrigues and factions of the French — their malice in endeavouring to wean the queen's affections from him, and their insolence in disposing her against the English language and nation. The king got at last so warm as to exclaim to the ambassador, " Why do you not execute your commission at once, and declare war ?" Bassompierre's answer was firm and dignified : " I E 2 52 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

I, without losing my respect to him, replied to him in such wise, that, at last, yielding him something, he conceded a great deal to me. I witnessed there an instance of great boldness, not to say impudence, of the Duke of Boukinkarn, which was, that when he saw us the most warmed, he ran up suddenly and threw himself between the king and me, saying, " I am come to keep the peace between you two." Upon which I took off my hat, and as long as he staid with us I would not put it on again, notwithstanding all the intreaties of the king and of himself to do so ; but when he went I put it on without the king's desiring me. When I had done, and that the duke could speak to me, he asked me why I would not put on my hat while he was by, and that I did so, so freely, when he was gone. I answered that I had done it to do him honour, because he was not covered and that I should have

am not a herald to declare war, but a marshal of France, to make it when declared." These grievances are all ex posed, with the addition of the great one of the penance at Tyburn, in the answer of the English commissioners to Bassompierre's complaint; which will be found in the Appendix. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 53 been, which I could not suffer ; for which he was much pleased with me, and often mentioned it in my praise. But I had also another reason (40) for doing so, which was, that it was no longer an audience, but a private conversation, since he had inter rupted us, by coming in, as a third, upon us. After my last audience was over, the king brought me through several galleries to the queen's apartments, where he left me, and I her, after a long conversation ;

(40) Another reason. — One cannot but admire the temper, presence of mind, and ingenuity which Bassom- pierre shewed on this trifling occasion, which contrast themselves very advantageously with the imprudence and insolence of the English favourite, whose arrogance to his sovereign was not, however, always so delicately reproved. " On the eventful day," says M. D'Israeli, " of D. Lambe's being torn to pieces, the king and duke being in the Spring Gardens, looking at the bowlers, the duke put on his hat. One Wilson, a Scotchman, first kissing the duke's hands, snatched it off, saying, ' Off with your hat before the king.' Buckingham, not apt to restrain his feelings, kicked the Scotchman ; but the king inter fering, said, ' Let him alone, George ; he is either mad or a fool.' ' No, Sir,' replied the Scotchman, ' I am a sober man ; and, if your majesty would give me leave, I will tell you that of this man which many know and none dare speak.'' (Cur. of Lit. iii. 452.) 54 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY and I was brought back to London by the same Earl of Britswater. Friday, the 16th, I was to see the Earl of Holland(41) sick at Inhimthort (42). The

(41) The Earl of Holland. Henry Rich, a younger son of the Lord Rich's, by Penelope Devereux, sister of the great Lord Essex, who by a second but irregular alliance with Mountjoy, Earl of Devonshire, had also a large family. This latter was the marriage, the cele bration of which so much disturbed the conscience of Archbishop Laud. Young Rich was far from flourishing in point of pe cuniary circumstances ; and though his elder brother was Earl of Warwick, and his younger Earl of Newport, and both with great fortunes, he was obliged to go a volun teer to the Dutch wars. Coming over to London while the army was in winter-quarters, he visited the court, and became very agreeable to Buckingham and King James. He also acquired the friendship of the Earl of Carlisle ; a friendship useful in every way to Rich, but particularly as affording him access to the purse of his friend — the most liberal, or, if you will, prodigal of men. It was suspected that Rich's friendship was somewhat interested ; but, to the credit of both, it survived the times when it could be suspected of being mercenary, and only ended with their lives. Buckingham took so great a fancy to him, that it was observed that the king was not in a greater hurry to ad vance Buckingham than Buckingham was to promote Rich. TO ENGLAND IN J 626. 55 king and queen returned to London. M. de Soubise(43) came to see me. After-

He first married him (for in those days the royal au thority went very far in these concerns) to the daughter and heiress of Cope, with whom he had a great landed property ; and, amongst the rest, the manor and seat of Kensington: and he was soon created Baron Kensing ton. He was successively and rapidly made gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, a privy counsellor, Earl of Holland, and knight of the garter. He was sent to France with Carlisle to negotiate the prince's marriage with Henrietta Maria. He na turally attached himself to the queen; and through her good graces, continued, even after Buckingham's death, to receive the most solid as well as the most splendid marks of the king's favour, for which he showed all due gratitude " while," as Clarendon says, " the wea ther was fair ; but the storm no sooner did arise but he abandoned his benefactor." His apostasy (more than once repeated) did not, however, save him from the san guinary licence of his new friends ; for, shortly after the king's murder, he was tried before a high court of justice, of which Bradshaw (who had presided at the king's trial) was again chief; and being found guilty for the only honest part of his conduct — his appearing in arms for the king, — he was beheaded in 1649, on a scaffold erected in front of Westminster Hall, unregretted by any side. It was to this gentleman that James gave so remark able an instance of his liberality. Sir Henry Rich, and Maxwell, a gentleman of the bedchamber, being one day 56 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

wards the duke sent to beg of me to come to Sommerset (44), where we were more

with the king in the gallery at Whitehall, some porters passed by, carrying 30001. in specie to the privy purse. Rich, seeing the money, turned to Maxwell, and whis pered him. The king, observing this, insisted on knowing what had passed. Maxwell told him that Rich had said that that sum of money would make him happy. Where upon the king, calling the porters, ordered them to carry the money to Rich's lodgings, saying, at the same time, " You think, now, that you have a great purchase ; but I am happier in giving you that sum than you can be in receiving it :" — a noble sentiment, which we could wish to have arisen on a worthier occasion. It is very different from, and indeed not consistent with, the mean falsehood and avarice, which Osborn (§ 29.) imputes to James, in the story of his recalling a present he had made to So merset ; because Cecil, to exhibit the difference between pounds Scottish and English, had spread out the gold on a long table. Holland House, from which Rich took his title, was built in 1607 by Sir Walter Cope, on the death of Cope, last Lord Holland and Warwick. The house and manor descended by females to William Edwardes, Esq. of Ha- verford West, created, in 1776, Lord Kensington, in Ireland. By him it was sold to Henry Fox ; and from it that family also take their title : a singular instance, I believe, of a single mansion-house conferring the titles of an earldom and barony, TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 57

than two hours disputing about our busi ness.

(42) Inhimthort. Walpole thinks this strange poly syllable means Kensington: In speaking of the droll mistakes the French make of our names, he says, " Bas- sompierre, in his Memoirs, calls Kensington Inhimthort. As a soldier and ambassador he was not, perhaps, obliged to know the names of houses ; but, when he turned au thor, there was no excuse for his being unintelligible (i. 221). Accuracy," he adds, " in the orthography of proper names is peculiar to the English;'' — he should have said, of the modern English ; — for Walpole's own hero, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in his life {printed at Strawberry Hill), is as magnanimously indifferent to foreign as his friend Bassompierre is to English ortho graphy: writing, for instance, St. lite for Chantilty, Antedor for Ventadour, and Cullin for Cologne. I doubt, however, that by Inhimthort our Marshal meant Kensington. Lord Holland lived at Kensington, it is true ; but Bassompierre, in another place, makes a much better attempt at Kensington, which he calls Stintinton : and, in the edition of 1692, the word is Inhimcourt. I therefore cannot help believing some other place is here, meant. (43) Soubise. Benjamin de Rohan, Duke de Sou- bise, brother of Henry, Duke of Rohan, Prince of Leon, one of the most distinguished leaders of the French Pro testants. After a great variety of military and naval ad ventures in their cause, with various success, he was now in England, soliciting assistance for La Rochelle, the last 58 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

Saturday, the 17th, I went to make my bow to the queen at Withal (45), and to

bulwark of protestantism in France. After the fall of that city, he declined returning to his native country, and established himself in England, where he died, in 1641. (Bayle. Moreri.) He was speaking to Bucking ham at the moment he was stabbed ; and the vivacity of his manner induced those who did not understand the language to suppose that they had quarrelled, and that Soubise had in consequence stabbed the duke. (White- lock, 11.) In the Ambassades, we find that the French court dis approved of Bassompierre's visit to Soubise ; and we find there, and elsewhere, that the protection afforded to him was one of the grievances urged by the court of France, at first by M. de Blainville, a former ambassador (Ry. xviii. 223), and afterwards by Bassompierre (Ambass.)

(44) Sommerset. — Somerset House, the famous palace built by the Protector Somerset (built on the site and out of the materials of some private buildings, and of two or three churches), fell to the crown on his attainder. The architecture was a mixture of Grecian and Gothic, and the garden front and water gate were built in 1623, from a design of Inigo Jones. A chapel was also begun the same year, the progress of which became afterwards a subject of discussion with the French negotiators — they insisting that there was no chapel, and the English assert ing that there was. This house was the palace of several generations of TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 59 give her an account of my conference of the day before with the duke.

queens. The first was Anne of Denmark, in whose time it was called Denmark House, (Stow, 1026;) it next was assigned to Queen Henrietta, not merely as a jointure house, but as a separate palace, during the life of her husband, for the purpose of exercising there the Roman Catholic religion. She returned thither after the Restoration for a short time, and beautified and improved it. It then became the peculiar residence of Charles the Second's forsaken Queen Catherine. These circumstances made it the haunt of the Catholics, and the head-quarters of popery in London ; and here, therefore, it was thought convenient to lay the scene of the murder of the famous protestant martyr, Sir Edmondbury God frey, and two of the supposed murderers were attendants belonging to the chapel. The death of that magistrate is to this hour involved in impenetrable mystery, but there is every reason to disbelieve that it was executed here, or that the poor creatures who suffered for the crime were really guilty of it. The present structure is from the plan of Sir William Chambers. The design does no great honour to his taste, and the unfinished state in which it is suffered to remain is an eye-sore to the capital, and a disgrace to the nation. But what is still more strange, the original designs are, it is said, not forthcoming, and it is not easy now to ascertain what Sir William Chambers intended the whole to be. It is remembered, however, that there were to have been entrances from the Strand to the two side courts as well as in the centre. 60 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

Sunday the 18th. — I was visited by the secretary, Couvai (46), who came to speak to me from the king.

I have often thought that the east side might be finished so as to afford a safe and commodious receptacle for the valuable collections of the British Museum, at present so inconveniently and so perilously huddled together at Montague House.

(45) Withal. — Of the ancient palace of Whitehall nothing now remains. The banqueting-house was but a small internal part of a glorious edifice, which Inigo Jones designed. As this ancient palace is wholly de- /" stroyed, and as the views of it are very rare, I have an- ^ nexed, as a mere curiosity, a lithographic sketch of it, taken from the medallic History of William the Third, printed in 1689. There are . particularities in this view which render it highly improbable that it was a fancy design; yet I am unable to reconcile it with any of the other views which I have seen of that palace : it would seem, by the paling in front, to be taken from the park ; but the banqueting-house is wholly omitted ; and it will be observed that the shade falls on the right hand, which would not be the case if the view were taken from that side. Perhaps these may be the buildings erected by James II., and mentioned by Evelyn — the architecture seems of the style and taste of that period — " 18 Oct. 1685. The king was now building all that range from east to west, by the court and garden to the street, and making a new chapel for the queen, as also a new council-chamber and offices next the south side of the banqueting house." (Evel. i. 614.) TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 61

Tuesday, 20.— Viscount Hamelton (Wen- bleton) and Goring came to dine with me.

It is generally supposed that Charles was beheaded on a scaffold erected in the front of the banqueting-house. — (Anecd. of P. 270.) This is, I believe, a mistake. The street in front of the banqueting-house did not then exist. It appears, from Mr. Herbert's account, (Mem. 193.) that " the king was led all along the galleries and banqueting- house, and there was a passage broken through the wall, by which the king passed unto the scaffold." This leads to a conclusion that the scaffold was erected on the north side, where the new porch and staircase is now built, and agrees with Pennant's supposition that this passage is still open, being in fact the present door into the chapel. r

(46) Couvai. — A printer's error in all the editions for Conway, or Connoue, as he is called in the Ambassades. Sir Edward Conway, Lord Conway in 1626, and Viscount Conway in 1627, had been one of the secretaries of state to James I. ; and the same office was regranted to him by Charles, 23d May, 1625, with a pension of 2000J. per annum for twenty-one years, which, ,in the title of the grant in Bymer, is erroneously stated at 200/. only. — (Rymer, xviii. 88.) Lord Clarendon says he was removed at last " for notable insufficiency." — (i. 24.) And in Dec. 1628, he was made president of the council, and Sir Dudley Carleton, Viscount Dorchester, appointed secretary in his room. — (Stow, 1044.) It is odd that Bassompierre, who is very careful in my lording people, should never call him by his proper 62 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

After dinner I was heard at the council, and on my return the Venetian ambassador came to visit me. Wednesday, 21st. — I wrote a despatch to the King (of France). I was to see the queen, and afterwards to confer with the duke in Sommerset (House). Thursday, 22d. — I was in the morning to see the ambassador of Danemark. The title of Lord Conway ; but it is to be observed that the office of secretary of state was still (both in England and France) considered as a subordinate one, and even the peerage did not exempt the possessor from the plebeian appellation of Mr. Secretary. Howell, in a letter to his father, 7 Aug. 1626, talks of Mr. Secretary Conway, but having occasion next day to address the minister himself, he gives him the My lord and your lordship very freely. — (Fam. Let. 193.) This Lord Conway's grandson, Edward, was created Earl of Conway, and had an only daughter, who was to have been married to her cousin, Mr. Seymour, but she died before the ceremony, and the earl left all his pro perty to the intended husband, and the other children in succession of his cousin Edward Seymour. The adopted son of Lord Conway was uncle to the eighth Duke of Somerset, but dying unmarried, the estates and name fell to his brother, Francis Seymour, who was soon after created Lord Conway, and from whom the noble house of Seymour Conway is descended. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 63

duke, with the Earls of Carlile and Holland and Montaigue, came to dine with me; I saw, en passant, the ambassador of the States on business, then I was to the queen's, and that evening at Madame D'Estranges (47).

(47) Madame D 'Estrange. — We should have been at some difficulty to have made out who this lady was, if Rymer had not preserved lettersof naturalization, 22d Sept. 1626, in favour of " Charlotte, Lady Strange, daughter of the most noble princess and our dear cousin, Char lotte, Duchess of Tremoille, and wife of our beloved James, Lord Strange, son and heir apparent of our be loved and most faithful cousin, William, Earl of Derby." Rymer in his index calls it by mistake " a grant to the Duchess of Tremouille.,, This lady was of very noble extraction both in the paternal and maternal lines. She was the daughter of Claude de la Tremouille, premier Duke of France, (whose mother was descended from the houses of Montmorency and Savoy), by the lady mentioned in note 32. Her husband, James, Lord Strange, afterwards seventh Earl of Derby, of birth scarcely less illustrious, was more nearly allied to royalty. He was the grandson of Alianore Countess of Cumberland, daughter of Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk, by Mary, Queen-dowager of France, daughter of King Henry VII. by Elizabeth, sister of Edward V. The characters of this well-matched couple were as noble as their births : with every feminine grace, the courage of the countess rivalled that of her lord, and her defence of Lathom House is amongst the most re markable exploits of that chivalrous age. Of the learned, 64 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

Friday, 23d. — I was to see the Earl of Carlile and the Venetian ambassador. Saturday, 24th. — I was to see the queen where the king came, with whom she pick'd a quarrel. The king took me to his cham- brave, and, as he is called (x«7' e^o^v), loyal Earl of Der by, the life and death were alike honourable. His famous answer to Ireton's proposition for the delivery of the Isle of Man, which has been so often printed, and so univer sally admired, is supposed to have been one of the rea sons why, in spite of his plea " that he had had quarter for his life granted to him," he was beheaded after the battle of Worcester, on the 15th Oct. 1657. The town of Bolton-le-Moors, which we have seen in our own day much tainted with disloyalty, was selected for the scene of the earl's execution by a paltry spirit of revenge, " as being a town of his own, against which he had expressed a severe displeasure for its obstinate rebellion against the king." (CI. iii. 412.) The genealogy of their son Charles, eighth Earl of Derby, is so illustrious as to deserve par ticular notice. It far exceeds that of Lord Carmarthen, which Walpole justly thought worth recording. His im mediate • ancestors in the paternal line bore the names of Stanley, Earl of Derby; Vere, Earl of Oxford; Cecil, Lord Burleigh ; Clifford, Earl of Cumberland; Brandon, Duke of Suffolk ; and Tudor, and Plantagenet, Kings of England ; and, by the mother's, he was uninterruptedly descended from the houses of Trimouille, Montmorency, Nassau, Bourbon, and Savoy. The representatives of all this illustrious blood are the Athol family, descended from a daughter of Earl James and Madame Estrange. The present House of Derby branched off at an earlier period. TO ENGLAND IN 1 626. 65

ber, and talked a great deal with me, making me complaints of the queen, his wife. Sunday, 25. — The Earls of Pembrac (48)

(48) Pembrac.— William Herbert* third Earl of Pem broke, lord-steward of the household, son of the sister of Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney's sister — Pembroke's mother !

It was indeed an honour to be the mother of Lord Pem broke ; but one which, we are told, (Osb. § 24.), she felt to be grievously counterbalanced, by being the mother of his brother Philip. In addition to what I have hinted in note 23, in palliation of Montgomery's character, is it unreasonable to say that the merits of his mother and his brother, the taste, genius, and virtues of his family, afford some slight reason to disbelieve that he was a monster with every contrary quality ? Lord Clarendon's character of Earl William is one of the most beautiful portraits that ever was drawn, and its truth is vouched by all his cotemporaries. He is entitled to the gratitude of posterity for having patronised Shake speare and Inigo Jones; and he was, notwithstanding some errors of conduct, one of the most accomplished and excellent persons of his day, and even these errors were of a venial kind, and such as may be forgiven to his youth, to the manners of the time, and to some circumstances of his domestic condition. He married Mary, eldest daughter and co-heir of Gilbert, seventh Earl of Shrewsbury, and Anne Cavendish, both persona F 66 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

and Montgomery came to see me, then I went for the duke, whom I took to the

distinguished for violence, not to say brutality of temper. Their daughter, notwithstanding Rowland White's strain of encomium on her and her domestic felicity (Lodge, iii. passim.), to a very disagreeable person, added, it would seem, some of the hereditary spirit ; and the Earl of Pembroke appears to have sought too often and too largely abroad compensation for -his domestic anxieties. Rowland White himself intimates that her ladyship, though a noble worthy lady, was of too stubborn a dis position to be " a good courtier :" and he assures us that his lordship " was surely as honourable a kind husband as any is in Great Brettagne." (Lodge, iii. 258.) This ap^ prdbatio of my lord is a little like exprobatio of my lady. He died 10th April, 1630, and a curious statement connected with his death, which Lord Clarendon did not disdain to insert in his history, may find a place in such notes as these. " A short story may not be unfitly inserted, it being fre quently mentioned by a person of known integrity, whose character is here undertaken to be set down, who at that time being on his way to London, met at Maidenhead some persons of quality of relation or dependence upon the Earl of Pembroke (Sir Charles Morgan, commonly called General Morgan, who had commanded an army in Germany, and defended Stoad ; Dr. Field, then Bishop of Saint David's ; and Dr. Chafin, the earl's then chaplain in his house, and much in his favour). At supper one of them drank a health to the lord-steward; upon which TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 67 queen's, who made his peace with her ; which I had brought about with infinite trouble. The king came in afterwards, and he also was reconciled with her, and ca ressed her very much — thanked me for having reconciled the duke and his wife — then took me to his chamber, where he showed me his jewels (49), which are very fine.

another of them said, " that he believed his lord was very merry, for he had now out-lived the day which his tutor, Sandford, had prognosticated upon his nativity he would not out-live ; but he had done it now, for that was his birthday, which had completed his age to fifty years. " The next morning, by the time they came to Cole- brook, they met with the news of his death." He was succeeded in his titles and estates by his brother, Philip, already Earl of Montgomery.

(49) His jewels. — These, I presume, were his private jewels ; many of the public jewels he had already pawned to the States-General. Warrants are extant authorising Buckingham and Sacville Crowe to pawn jewels to the amount of 300,000/., viz. " a great rich Jewell of goulde, calTd the Mirror of Great Britain, haveing twoe faire litle dyamonds, twoe other large dyamonds cut lozenge wise, garnish'd with small dyamonds, and a pendant with a faire dyamond cutt in fawcetts without foyle," &c. (Rym. F 2 68 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

Monday, 26th. — I was, in the morning* to see the ambassador of Danemark ; after dinner I went to the queen at Sommerset, and fell out with her. . ' Tuesday, 27th. — The Duke, the Earls of Dorset, Carlile, Holland, Montaigu, and Goring, came to dine with me. I went afterwards to see the Earl of Pembroc and Carleton. In the evening I had a courrier from France. Wednesday, 28th. — I was at Withal in the morning to speak with the duke and Secretary Couvai, because the king was going to Hampton-Court. After dinner I went to see the queen at Sommerset, with whom I made it up. In the evening the duke and Earl of Holland took me to sup at Antonio Porter's (50), who was enter- xviii. 236. 246.) Whitelock tells us, that when the queen took refuge in Holland, in 1641, she carried all her own and the king's jewels, not leaving behind the jewels of the crown (p. 52); and Messrs. Webster and Sands, and two .other English merchants in Holland, were impeached for being the chief actors in pawning the crown jewels. (Whit. 78.)

(50) Antonio Porter. — Probably Endymion Porter, TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 69 taining Dom Augustin Fiesco, Marquis of Piennes, the Chevallier de Jars, and Gabel- lin. After supper we had music. Thursday, 29th. — In the morning I had visits from the Earl of Holland and the Earl of Carlile. After dinner I went to see the ambassador of Holland. Friday, the 30th.. — I was to see the queen at Sommerset, and the duke at Va- linfort(51). The resident of the king of Bohemia came to sup with me.

gentleman of Charles's bed-chamber when Prince of Wales; he had been in the journey to Spain, and was now groom of the bed-chamber to the king. (Rymer, xviii. 286.) He was suspected of a fondness for the celebrated Mrs. Lemon, Vandyke's mistress, whose picture is at Hampton-Court. Walpole, in speaking of Vandyke, in his Anecdotes of Painting, 225, by a confusion very un usual with that elegant writer, leaves one to doubt whe ther a picture by Vandyke, at Buckingham-House, was of Endymion Porter and his family, or of Charles I. and his. Vandyke certainly painted both families. (Anecd, 330.)

(51) Valinfort. — Wallingford-House stood near Char- ing-Cross, nearly on the site of the present admiralty, and 70 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

Saturday, last day of October. — The ambassador of Danemark came to see me,

was, I presume, the town-house of Buckingham's friend, William Knollys, Viscount Wallingford, created 18 Aug. 1626, Earl of Banbury. (Rymer, xviii. 745.) Yet it would seem that it also was, as well as York-House, the residence of Buckingham himself; for Bassompierre twice visits Buckingham on business at Wallingford-House. Stow states, that after his assassination the duke's body was brought to Wallingford-House (1044), though Frank- land says to York-House ; and the Peerage says that the duke's son and successor was born in Wallingford-House. Here then we have Buckingham with two palaces within a stone's throw of each other ; and yet Howell, as we have seen, at this very time advises him to have a settled re sidence. I know not how to reconcile all this, but by supposing that York-House was a kind of official and state residence lent him by the king, and that in the other he had domestic apartments. Lodge, we have seen, (note 19,) must be mistaken in saying that Bucking ham bought York-House from Archbishop Matthews; and when Pennant tells us (141) that it was granted to Buckingham, and that on the marriage of his son with the daughter of Fairfax, to whom the parliament had granted it, " it reverted to its true owner," I doubt whe ther he does not mistake a loan for a grant, particularly as we know that two lords chancellors had previously occupied the house officially. ► TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 71

and afterwards I came to see Madame D'Etrange. Sunday, the 1st of November, and All Saints Day. — I performed my devotions, and afterwards was to see the Duchess of Lennox (52) and Secretary Couvai. A coun cil was held to-day for my business.

I suspect also that Wallingford-House may have been borrowed by the duke, and that therefore Howell might advise him to have a fixed residence of his own. . In Wallingford-House died, in 1632, of a disease as strange and as horrible as her depravity, (Wilson, 83.) the infamous Countess of Essex, and she died in mortal enmity with the unhappy Somerset, the cause, the part ner, and victim of her crimes. The only fruit of this disastrous union was a daughter, married to the Earl of Bedford, and mother of the celebrated Lord Russel. The countess's sister had married Lord Wallingford, so that the house was then probably in possession of that family. From the roof of this house Archbishop Usher, then living with the Countess of Peterborough, was prevailed upon to take a last look at his beloved master when brought upon the scaffold at Whitehall. He sunk in horror at the sight, and was carried off in a swoon to his apartments. (Pennant, 110.)

(52) Duchess of Lennox. — There were at this period 72 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

Monday, 2d.— I was in the morning to see the Earl of Holland; and afterwards,

two Duchesses of Lennox,— -Catherine Clifton, widow of Duke Esme, — and Frances Howard, daughter of Lord Bindon, and widow of Duke Lodowick. As the latter was a proud, busy, intriguing woman, of great weight at this period, it is probable that it was to her that the ambas sador's visit was made, and her character is worth the notice of my readers. She was the widow, first, of a Mr. PrannelJ a citizen, secondly, of Edward parl 0f Hertford, and now of the Duke of Lennox, a kinsman of the king's. Though her first match was so humble, she was a vain, ambitious woman. " While Countess of Hertford she was fond of discoursing very loftily about her grandfathers, the Dukes of Norfolk and Buckingham ; but if her husband happened to come in he would bring her down from these noble flights, with asking, " Frank, Frank, how long is it since you were married to Prannell ?" (Wilson, 259,) The indelicacy of the reproof was but of little conse quence to persons of thejr tempers, for he had three wives, as she, at last, had three husbands ; and it is odd that they seemed carefully to reverse the gradations of rank in their respective and snccessive spouses. She began with a merchant, rose to an earl, and finished with a duke of royal blood. He began with a daughter of a duke of royal blood (Lady Catherine Grey), next mar ried the daughter of an earl (Nottingham), and finally descended to the merchant's widow. But neither the TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 73 the duke having made me an appointment in the queen's gallery, we had a very long

number or rank of her husbands seem to have satisfied this aspiring dame, for Wilson tells us, amongst other curious anecdotes of her, that she looked to another and a greater. " For, finding the king (James) a widower, she vowed, after so great a prince as Richmond, never to be blown with kisses, or eat at the table of a subject; and this vow must be spread abroad that the king may notice the bravery of her spirit ; but this bait would not catch the old king, and she, to make good her resolution, speciously observed her vow to the last." (258.) A curious incident in her history remains to be told. After Prannell's death — a young, beautiful, and child less widow — she attracted the affection of Sir George Rodney, a gentleman of the west, who had some encou ragement and hopes of succeeding in his suit ; but he, it seems, was not exalted enough for such a proud spirit, and she, on the first summons, jilted the knight, and surren dered to the Earl of Hertford, who took her down to Amesbury, in Wiltshire. Thither Rodney followed them, and shutting himself up in a room of an inn in the town, wrote a large paper of well-composed verse in his own blood, addressed to the new countess ; wherein he be wails his loss, and laments his misfortunes. Having finished this melancholy elegy, he ran himself upon his sword, and died on the spot ! She was not of a temper to be much affected with this catastrophe. She died in 1679. 74 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY conference there. After dinner, I returned to see the queen, to give her an account of my proceedings with the duke, at which she was uneasy, as we had parted on bad terms. Tuesday, 3d. — The duke brought his little daughter (53) to my house, as a mark of reconciliation. He staid to dinner with Montagu, Nery (54), and Porter ; then took me to the king's, who went to play at

(53) Little daughter. — Mary, his only daughter, to whom, by patent, (Aug. 1627,) the dukedom was granted in default of heirs male. (Rym. xviii. 987.) She was three times married ; — to Charles, Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Montgomery, who died 1635 ; then to James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond ; and, finally, to Thomas Howard, brother of the first Earl of Carlisle. She left no issue by any of her husbands. There is something very amiable in the duke's bringing his little daughter, about five years old, as his mediator with Bassompierre.

(54) Nery. — I have not been able to discover who this is, unless, as I suspect, the name is, like Cheri, after wards mentioned, a corruption for Cary ; or that Fery (note 34) and Nery are the same person. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 75 tennis, and I to see the queen, and to let her know of my reconciliation with the duke. Wednesday, 4th. — I went to see the Duchess of Lennox. I wrote to the duke on the subject of my business, then went to the queen to shew her the copy of what I had said. The duke sent Montaigu to sup with me, and to assure me, on his part, that he would arrange all my business to my wishes, of which 1 immediately sent off to apprise the queen. Thursday, 5th. — Secretary Couvai came to tell me that I should come to-morrow to the council, where I should have a final an swer to my proposition. I then went to Madame D'Etrange. Friday, 6th. — The duke came to dine with me, and afterwards took me to court, in one of the king's chambers, where he left Goring, Montaigu, and Lucnar to entertain me. He came soon after to look for me, and told me that the answer which the council proposed to give me was good for nothing, but that I should not be uneasy about it, but that I should reply stoutly on the spot, and that afterwards he would 76 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

make it all up in a way to satisfy me. A little after, Secretary Couvai came to call me into the council ; where, after they had placed a chair for me at the upper end, the lords of the council acquainted me, by the mouth of Carlton, that having deliberated on the proposition which I had made to this same council some days before, they now gave me my answer in writing — and then had it read. Upon which, having asked a hearing to reply to them on this chapter, I did so with great vehemence, and better, to my own liking, than I had ever spoken in my life. My reply lasted above an hour. Then having come out, I went to the queen to shew her the fine (55) answer which they had given me ; and I told her, in substance, what I had replied and protested, at which she was much obliged. That very evening the duke sent to tell me, that all those of the council who spoke

(55) This expression, and, indeed, the general style of the text, may appear too trivial and familiar. I can only repeat, that I have thought it right to endeavour to pre serve the very manner of my author. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 77 or understood French would come to me to-morrow morning, and that I might en tertain hopes of a favourable conclusion, for the king had told them that his design was to satisfy the king (of France), his brother, and to send me back satisfied. Saturday, the 7th. — The Earl of Dor- chets came to me as early as seven o'clock in the morning, to tell me that I should be satisfied ; and that the council would come soon after to meet me, and that it only de pended upon me that all should go right. He found me in a bad state for a discussion, for either the weather, which was very foggy (56), or my constitution, or the long

(56) Foggy. — The fogs of England have been at all times the complaint of foreigners. Gondomar, the Spa nish ambassador, when some one who was going to Spain waited on him, to ask whether he had any commands, replied, " only my compliments to the sun, whom I have not seen since I came to England." Caraccioli, the Nea politan minister here, a man of a good deal of conversa tion wit, used to say that the only ripe fruit he had seen in England were roasted apples ; and in a conversation with Geo. II. he took the liberty of preferring the moon of Naples to the sun of England. 78 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY and vehement reply I had made the pre ceding day, had put me in such a state that I had lost my voice, and notwithstanding all my efforts, he could scarcely hear me ; and soon after the duke and council arrived, and we being all seated, answered my reply, and at last protested, in the same manner that I had done, against the mischief which might ensue from our rupture ; proposing, however, that if we could agree upon some good means of arrangement, it would be very agreeable to the king ; which we then went to work about, and found no great trouble in it, for they were reasonable, and I was moderate in my demands. The greatest difficulty was about the re-esta blishment of the priests, upon which, how ever, we at last agreed. I gave them afterwards a magnificent en tertainment, and when they were gone I went immediately to the queen, to bring her the good news of our treaty. Sunday, 8th. — The duke, and Earl of Holland, came to dine with me. The Duke of Lennox (57) came to see me, and then I

(57) Duke of Lennox. — This must have been James TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 79 went to see the king in his chamber, where I had a private audience, in which he confirmed and ratified all that his com missioners had negotiated and concluded with me, which he showed me in writing, and made me read it. In the evening the agent of the King of Bohemia came to con gratulate with me, and to sup, as did also largely (58) the Danish ambassador.

Stuart, fourth Duke of Lennox, at this time only fourteen years of age (he was born 6th April, 1612). Charles I. whose relation he was, showed him great favour, and " out of his kindness to both families," married him to the only daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, widow of the eldest son of the Earl of Montgomery : he was also created Duke of Richmond. He was a man of good parts and still better principles. He was one of those who offered their own lives to ransom that of the king ; and was no doubt sincere in thus proposing himself as a vicarious victim, for his whole conduct testified his high- minded loyalty before the king's death, and his deep sorrow afterwards. He died in 1655.

(58) The Danes were at this time proverbial through out Europe for too great indulgence in the pleasures of the table ; and it would appear that Bassompierre's guest was, as an ambassador ought to be, a faithful representa tive of his country. It is singular that Bassompierre, 80 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

Next day, Monday, the 9th, which is the election of the mayor, I came in the morn ing to Sommerset to meet the queen, who had come there to see him go on the Thames on his way to Westminster to be sworn in, with a magnificent display of boats. Then the queen dined, and after wards got into her coach, and placed me at the same door (59) with her. The Duke of

who thinks it worth while to record his Excellency's ap petite, has omitted his name.

(59) At Hie same door. — In the great old coaches of former times there were two stools or seats opposite the doors, on which persons sat back to back, looking out of the side windows, as we still see the chaplain and the se cretary of the Speaker of the House of Commons when he uses his state-coach. Mr. Speaker's coach, however, cumbrous as it is, gives an inadequate idea of the vast machines of former days, which were rather closets on wheels, than what we would call coaches. When Henry IV. was stabbed, there were seven per sons in the coach with him, and yet nobody saw the blow; and the murderer might, if he pleased, have escaped. And when Louis XIV. declared his grandson King of Spain, he took him the first stage in his own coach, which held with great convenience the whole royal family. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 81

Boukinkam also by her commands got into her coach, and we went into the street called

" The two kings," says St. Simon, " and the Duchess of Burgundy sat at one side, the Dauphin and the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry opposite, and the Duke and Duchess of Orleans at the two doors." (Vol. iii. p. 173.) A most illustrious coachful ! Even down to our own time the King of France main tained this cumbrous parade. On the horrible 6th of Oc tober, 1789, when the populace dragged their humiliated king to Paris from Versailles, there were in his majesty's coach the King, the Queen, the Dauphin, the Duchess of Angouleme, the present King, then Monsieur, his wife, Madame Elizabeth, and Madame de Tourzel. There was one circumstance in this procession which distinguished it from, I believe, any other which ever existed. It was preceded by two men bearing on pikes the heads of two of the king's body guards, that very morning murdered in his palace ; and with a refinement of sanguinary levity, the procession was stopped while a hair-dresser curled and powdered the hair of the ghastly heads. (Ann. de Molleville, ii. 143.) When Queen Elizabeth went to St. Paul's to return thanks for the defeat of the Armada, w she did come in a chariot-throne, with four pillars behind to bear a canopie, on the top whereof was a crown imperial, and two lower pillars before, whereon stood a lion and a dragon, sup- G 82 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

Shipside (60) to see the ceremony, which is the greatest that is made at the reception of any officer in the world. While waiting

porters of the arms of England, drawn by two white horses." (Stow, 751.) Coaches were introduced into England in the latter end of the Queen's reign, and she in her old age used re luctantly such an effeminate conveyance. They were at first drawn only by two horses ; " but," says Wilson, (p. 130) " the rest crept in by degrees, as men at first venture to sea." The Duke of Buckingham was the first who ventured on six horses, which created at the time great scandal, and was looked upon as a mark of the " mastering spirit" of the favourite. " The stout old Earl of Northumber land," who had been in the Tower ever since the gun powder-plot," when he got loose, thought, if Buckingham had six, he might have eight in his coach, with which he rode through the city of London, to the vulgar talk and admiration." Buckingham also seems to have been one of the first importers of chairs, called sedan-chairs, and his being carried on men's shoulders gave rise to great clamour and loathing against him, as having reduced men to the con dition of beasts. In a few years afterwards they came into general use like hackney-coaches.

(60) Shipside. — Cheapside. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 88

for it to pass, the queen played at primero with the duke, the Earl of Dorchet, and me; and afterwards the duke took me to dine with the lord-mayor, who that day gave a dinner to more than eight hundred persons (61). After dinner the duke and the Earls of Montgomery and Hollande having brought me home, I went to walk in the Morffield (62).

(61) A dinner to eight hundred persons. — A laudable custom, which has survived to our time. No traditions. are more strictly observed in England than those con nected with eating and drinking.

(62) The Morffield. — Moorfields. Stow gives us the following account of the laying out this then fashionable .promenade. " The new and pleasant walkes on the north side of the city, anciently called Morefield, which field (untill the third yeere of King James,) was a most noysome and offensive place, being a generall laystall, a rotten morish ground, whereof it first took the name. This fielde for many yeeres was environed and crossed with deep stink ing ditches, and noysome common shewers, and was of former times ever held impossible to be reformed, espe cially to be reduced to any part of that fayre, sweete, and pleasant condition as now it is. And likewise the two G2 84 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

Wednesday, 11th. — I went with the Earl of Hollande, Mr. Herbert (63), who had

other fieldes adjoining, which untill the late time afore- sayd were infectious, and very grievous unto the city, and All passengers, who by all meanes endeavoured to shun those fields, being loathsome both to sight and sent: yet, neverthelesse, upon the good opportunitie of sweete peace, whereof these three fields will euer remaine a per fect testimony, the first of which, viz. that fayre square next the city wall, was greatly furthered by Sir Leonard Holliday, in the time of his maioralty, and through the great paynes and industry of Master Nicholas Leate, re duced from the former vile condition unto most fayre and royall walkes, as they now are ; which worke, whilest it was doing, being very difficult, the people spake very bit terly and rudelie against those two worthy men, and their good endeavours therein, and in derision sayd, it is a holi day worke. All which they patiently endured, and per sisted ; but when the multitude saw this worke brought into desired effect, their inconstant mindes changed, and applauded the effect." (1021.)

(63) Mr. Herbert. — I have no doubt that this Mr. Herbert is the celebrated Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who was sent ambassador to France to interpose in be half of the protestants of that kingdom ; " where," says Walpole, " he returned the insolence of the great Con stable Luynes, with the spirit of a gentleman, without TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 85

been ambassador in France, to Semilton(64>), which belongs to Mr. Edward Cecile, who

committing his dignity of ambassador." (R. and N. A. 361.) I have nothing to add to the account which he himself and Walpole have given of his romantic life. There is nothing which one so much regrets in Bassom- pierre as the little he tells us of the eminent and ex traordinary men whom he met with in his course of life, and of whom there probably did not live a more acute and discerning judge.

(64) Semilton. — Wimbledon. The manor of Wimble don belonged to the crown, but Queen Elizabeth gave it to Sir Thomas Cecil, Earl of Exeter, son of Lord Bur leigh, who built a house there in 1588. It was in this house that the scene was laid of a supposed confession of Lady Exeter, mother-in-law of Edward Cecil, of the guilt of adultery and poison. This strange story is so characteristic of the times and of James, that I shall perhaps be excused for relating it. Sir Thomas Lake, secretary of state, had been a kind of secretary to Walsingham, and in some degree of favour with Queen Elizabeth, to whom he was reader. He was actually reading to her when the Countess of Warwick apprised him that his office was at an end, for the queen was dead. His eldest daughter was married to the Lord Rous, a son of the second Earl of Exeter's by a former wife, and a peer in right of his mother. Lord Rous, on his return to England after an embassy extraordinary into 86 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

is viscount thereof. It is three leagues from London, and a very fine house, where

Spain, had fallen into some degree of coolness with his wife and her family, and he soon went over into Italy, where he reconciled himself to the church of Rome, and professed popery, through, it was then said, " the cozen ing'" of Gondomar. Upon this Lady Rous, and her mother, Lady Lake, accused Lord Rous of incest and adultery with his step- grandmother, Frances Bridges, wife of the first Earl of Exeter ; and, further, of an attempt to conceal his crime by poisoning his wife and her mother, and they attributed his journey to the continent to the discovery of this double or triple guilt. This family scandal soon got wind, and James, always ready to display his sagacity, soon brought the parties before him. The Countess of Exeter protested her innocence after the usual forms, and produced so favourable an impression, that the Ladies Lake and Rous (called too familiarly by the author of Aulicus Coquinarise, Mother Lake, and her daughter,) forged a written acknowledgment of guilt and a prayer for forgiveness, purporting to be signed by the countess. When this paper is produced, the king very carefully in quires the place, time, and occasion in which so extra ordinary a confession was made. The ladies answer, that all parties being met at Wimbledon-house to arrange their differences, the countess, as an inducement for par don, wrote with her own hand all the circumstances, " at TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 87 the owner had asked me to dine, who gave us a magnificent entertainment. The

the window," in the upper end of the great chamber at Wimbledon, in presence of the mother and daughter, the Lord Rous, and one Diego, a Spanish servant of my lord's. Lord Rous and Diego had quitted England pro bably for ever, and were, as the ladies thought, safe wit nesses to invoke. But James's natural sense of justice, as well as his vanity, induced him to make deeper in quiries into the affair. He sent a confidential person to Rome to examine Lord Rous and Diego, who brought back from them the most direct and solemn denials of the story of the two ladies. At the same time a collection of Lady Exeter's letters were compared with the supposed confession, and by good judges pronounced not to be the same hand-writing. The conspirators, finding the evi dence thus against them, had recourse to a new expe dient, and they produced one Sarah Swinton, a chamber maid, who swore that having for curiosity hid herself behind the hangings at the entrance of the room, she had heard Lady Exeter read over the confession after she had written it. They also produced the confession of one Luke Hutton, acknowledging that he for an annuity of 407. was hired by the countess to poison them. The king, as soon as he heard Sarah Swinton's deposi tion, lost not a moment in riding over with some of the lords of his court to Wimbledon, as if to look at the house. They examined the gallery, and found that when 88 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

Countess of Exchester(65) came there to do the honours of the house with his wife.

one was placed behind the hangings near the entrance,, he could not hear one speaking loud at the window. The king also observed that the hangings, which were thirty years up, were at least two feet from the ground, so that a woman standing there could not but have been disco vered. " Oaths," quoth the king, " cannot confound my sight." And now, by wonderful accident, Luke Hutton, who for a long time had not been heard of, chanced to appear, and fully contradicted the confession attributed to him. The king, satisfied in his own mind of the atrocity of this charge, sent for Sir Thomas Lake, for; whom he had a regard, and shewing him the real state of the case, advised him to leave his wife and daughter to themselves, and not to involve himself in their infamy; but Lake, with perhaps a laudable feeling, thanked the king for his advice, though he could not it take. "He, could not forget," he said, " that he was a husband and a father." The trial, therefore, proceeded in his name as well as theirs. After some days hearing, when the thing appeared to the public still doubtful, the king, before whom the cause was heard in the Star Chamber, began to produce the proofs he had collected; upon which Lady Rous confessed her falsehood, and her father and mother were fined 10,000/. to the king, and 5000/. to Lady Exeter, and 50/. to Luke Hutton, whose name they had abused. Sarah Swinton was sentenced to be whipped at TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 89

After dinner we came to the house of a merchant, one Mr. Bel, an old host and

the cart's tail, and Lady Rous, in consideration of her confession, was spared from a penal sentence. The king, in his usual style, likened this affair to the first sin in Paradise, — Lady Lake to the serpent, the daughter to Eve, and Sir Thomas to " poor Adam." A simile which we presume was meant to convey his majesty's notion of the relative guilt of the parties. The expenses of pro ceedings in the Star Chamber must have been consider able, for Sir Thomas afterwards told his friends that it had cost him 30,000/., which is double the amount of his fines, heavy as they were. (Aul. Coq. 98.) Wimbledon-house, after Lord Exeter's death, de volved to his third son, Edward, who had his title hence, but on the 18th November, 1628, a part of it was blown up by a negligence of gunpowder, (Stow, 1044,) and the very next day Lord Wimbledon's town residence, " a faire house in the Strand, was burnt clean down." (lb.) During the civil wars General Lambert obtained pos session of this seat ; and after passing through a variety of hands, it was at last purchased by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who built a house upon the site of the old one, and left it to her grandson, Jack Spencer, the an cestor of Earl Spencer, the present possessor. (Spencer's Complete Eng. Trav. 123.)

(65) Exchester. This probably was not the lady men tioned in the last note, but Elizabeth Drury, who was both sister and sister-in-law to Lady Wimbledon, and 90 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY friend of mine, who gave me a collation there. The carnival (66) of the English commences that day, which, according to their Kalendar (67), is All Saints Day. second wife of William, second Earl of Exeter : she died in 1658, aet. eighty-three, and was therefore at this period about fifty. I stated by mistake in note 24, that Diana Drury was the third wife of Lord Wimbledon, and sur vived him : the fact is, she was his second wife ; the third was Sophia Zouch, who died in 1691 ; and as Lord Wim bledon was born in 1571, the lives of this couple extended over a space of a hundred and twenty years — a circum stance rendered more extraordinary by there having been issue of a marriage contracted so late in one life and so early in the other.

(66) I am a little puzzled to make out what Bassom- pierre means by placing the carnival at this period. The carnival, properly speaking, is the period immediately preceding Lent, when in catholic countries they bid " farewell to flesh,'' — came vale. During the French carnival was held the Foire St Germain, to which the court and people of Paris used to resort, to lay in a stock of carnal amusement to last them through the sacred quarantine; and we find throughout all Bassompierre's Journal, as well as in the Memoirs of Mile, de Monpen- sier, that the gaieties with which the year commenced at the Foire St. Germain is an important and never for gotten topic. If, therefore, Bartholomew or any other great fair were held at this period, I should have had no TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 91

Thursday, 12th. — I was to Milord Carle- ton, who was charged with the preparation of my despatches. Thence I went to see the king ; then I brought Goring and Vis count Semilton (Wimbledon) to dine with me. The Earl of Carlisle sent to present me with six fine horses. I went to see the Stuart (68), Earl of Pembroc and Secretary doubt that it was the carnival alluded to ; but as Bassom- pierre's carnival succeeds lord-mayor's day, I must suppose he means the pageants, mummeries, and mirth which ac companied that city festival, and which were so followed by the populace, that when Sir Walter Raleigh was to be executed, and it being thought prudent not to do it in presence of a crowd, the day chosen was " lord mayor's day, that the pageants and shows might advocate and draw away the people," and the place, Palace-yard, to be as far as possibly from the assemblage. (Aub. MS. Seward's Anecd. i. 260.) I do not find that these pageants lasted more than one day, (Evel. i. 341. 349) and yet Bassompierre seems to imply that they only began on the 10th or 11th No vember, and were to last some days.

(67) Their Kalendar. — The old style, which, to the shame of England, lasted with us till 1752.

(68) The Stuart. — He means the Lord Stewart, Earl of Pembroke. 92 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

Couvai, and not finding them, I came to the queen's, where the king came, who fell out with one another, and I afterwards with the queen on that account, and told her that I should next day take leave of the king, and return to France without finish ing the business, and should tell the king (of France), and the queen, her mother, that it was her fault. When I had returned home, Father Sancy (69), to whom she had written about our falling out, came to make

(69) Father Sancy. — Here we have a full justifica tion of Charles's demand, on the first arrival of the em bassy, that Father Sancy should be sent back. It is evident that this meddling priest was pushing the queen to demands so unreasonable, that even Bassompierre could not justify them; and when the queen quarrels with her husband, and the ambassador of her brother sent to support her cause, we find Father Sancy at the bottom of the intrigue. Bassompierre must have now acknowledged the policy, if not the justice, of Charles's original demand ; and it would seem as if this Father Sancy had been charged, probably by the queen-mother, with some dominant authority, and was desirous of being " viceroy" over Bassompierre. One is surprised to find the English court so early and so well apprised of this man's mission, as, it appears, they were. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 93 it up, but with such impertinencies that I got very angry with him. Friday, 13th. — I was in the morning to the Dutch ambassador's, afterwards at Se cretary Couvai's, and after dinner to the Countess of Exchester and her daughter, the Countess of Oxfort (70). I would not go to the queen's, who had commanded me to do so. Saturday, 14th. — The Earl of Carlile came to me to reconcile me with the queen ; then Secretary Couvai and Milord Carleton came, as the king's commissioners, to con clude and finish our business. I afterwards went to see the Duke of Boukinkam at his house of Jorschan, who asked me to sup with him to-morrow with the king. Sunday, 15th. — The Danish ambassador came to visit me; after which I went to the king at Withal, who placed me in his barge, and took me to the duke's at Jor-

(70) Countess of Oxfort. — Diana Cecil, daughter of William, Earl of Exeter, and of Elizabeth Drury, one of the most eminent beauties and fortunes of her time. (Wilson, 161.) Her husband, Henry, eighteenth Earl of Oxford, died at the siege of Breda in 1625. 94 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY schau, who gave him the most magnificent entertainment I ever saw in my life. The king supped at one table with the queen and me, which was served by a complete ballet (71) at each course, with sundry repre-

(71) A complete ballet: — That is, the dishes were served by persons in fancy dresses, and in some kind of allegorical show, with music and dancing. Mr. DTsraeli had printed, from an original letter in the British Museum, an account of one of those fanciful entertainments, which now appears to be the very one mentioned by Bassom- pierre. " Last Sunday, at night, the duke's grace entertained their majesty s and the French ambassador, at York House, with great feasting and show, where all things came down in clouds; amongst which, one rare device was a representation of the French king and the two queens, with their chiefest attendants, and so to the life, that the queen's majesty could name them : it was four o'clock in the morning before they parted, and then the king and queen, together with the French ambassador, lodged there. Some estimate this entertainment at five or six thousand pounds." (Cur. of Lit. iii. 384.) In these feasts and festivals, as well as in some more serious affairs, Buckingham employed Sir Balthazar Ger- bier(ofwhom more hereafter), one of those ingenious men whom the duke's taste, magnificence, and love of the fine arts, had attracted into England. The early part of Charles's reign was the dawn, and, I am sorry to be TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 95 sentations — changes of scenery, tables, and music: the duke waited on the king at table, the Earl of Carlile on the queen, and the Earl of Hollande on me. After supper the king and we were led into another room, where the assembly was, and one en tered it by a kind of turnstile, as in con vents, without any confusion, where there was a magnificent ballet, in which the duke danced: and afterwards we set to and

obliged to add, the noon of the fine arts amongst us. It was that age which, to use Walpole's expression, " bor rowed Rubens, adopted Vandyke, and produced Inigo Jones." It was that age which collected those treasures which have spread such magnificent specimens of painting, and sculpture, and architecture, over the face of England. If the murder of the king, and the plunder of his palaces, had not scattered the royal collections, the crown of Eng land would have possessed, at this day, a gallery which that of the Louvre could not equal : nay, if the royal col lections, now scattered through Windsor, Hampton Court, Kensington, the Queen's and Carlton houses, were assem bled, we should be ourselves astonished at the greatness and magnitude of our wealth ; and many of the fine spe cimens of the arts now forgotten or neglected, and, I fear, in some instances perishing, might be preserved to the use and admiration of posterity.

r 96 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY danced country-dances (72) till four in the morning; thence we were shown into vaulted apartments (73) where there were five different collations.

(72) Our country-dances are a corruption in name, and a simplification in figure, of the French " contre- danse ;" but these changes are very ancient, for Weldon, sneering at the want of polite education of Buckingham's kindred, observes, that it was easier to put on fine clothes than to learn the French dances, and therefore that " none else but countrey-dances" must be used at court. (134.)

(73) Vaulted apartments. The ground on which this palace stood shelves down from the Strand, where the great entrance was, to the river. The principal floor and state rooms were probably on the level with the entrance on the Strand side, but must have been a story above the ground on the river side ; and this story was probably the vaulted apartments which Bassompierre mentions. It seems odd that he should think the vaulting a peculiarity worth mentioning : as the ground floors of the Tuileries and the Louvre, in which he passed most of his life, were vaulted ; but vaulted domestic apartments were probably then, as now, extremely rare; and the singular and magnificent effect produced by vaulted rooms, furnished for the purposes of common life, must have struck a person of Bassompierre's taste. We have seen, in our own time, a similar effect produced by the lower part of TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 97

Monday, 16th. The king, who had slept at Jorschau, sent for me to hear the queen's music. Afterwards he ordered a ball ; after which there was a play, and he retired with the queen his wife to Withal. Tuesday, 17th. I went to see my Lord Carleton. The Earl Dunalme (74) and my Lord Mandevill (75) dined with me. I went to see Madame D'Etrange. The agent of Bohemia supped with me. Wednesday, 18th. I was to see the D,utch ambassador, when the duke came to look for me. I then carried Secretary Couvai a list of the priests (76) who were the house of the Speaker of the House of Commons which is in this style.

. (74) Earl of Dunalme. I cannot discover who is meant here ; perhaps (Hume) Earl of Dunbar, who was a considerable person at this period.

(75) Viscount Mandevill. This title was now borne by the famous Lord Kimbolton ; but I believe Bassom- pierre means his father, the Earl of Manchester, lately so created, and whose titles Bassompierre elsewhere con founds. (76) A list of (tie priests. Rymer has preserved the warrant under the sign manual, 27 Nov. 1626, for the. H 98 BASSOMPIERRE S EMBASSY in prison, all of whom the king released in compliment to me. I went in the evening release of, and permitting to go abroad of 16 priests, " at the intercession of the Mareschal de Bassompierre, Am bassador Extraordinary from the Most Christian King our dear Brother,'' the Ambassador engaging to carry them abroad. Particular care seems taken to express that this was done in compliment to Bassompierre, as he tells us, and as the deed runs, " to gratify the said Martiall ;" and on the same day, a commission for the seizure and detention of French ships and property was issued. (Ry. 18, 802.) From the effect of which, the trade of Bour- deaux, Bayn (Bayonne), La Rochelle, and other ports of Aquitaine, are excepted, on an allegation that the parlia ment of Bourd'eaux, and the other authorities in that quarter, had not concurred in the injustice and injuries done to the British trade, which are stated as the grounds of this measure. Yet Stow relates, that, in the summer of this year, an hundred sail of English ships were arrested anddeaux: detained and he inadds, the that French the citizens ports, of especiilly London fitted at Bour- seve ral ships out against the enemy, which, after suffering much rough weather, and making a great many prizes, returned to port on the 4th of January ; yet it was not till the 20th of April, 1627, that the usual commission for reprisals was addressed to the Admiralty. (Rymer, xviii. 887.) I know not how to reconcile Stow's account with the official documents, but by supposing that Bourdeaux and the ports of Aquitaine being ill affected to their king, it was thought politic to encourage them, and, perhaps, that the seizure of the British ships in the river of Bour- TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 99 to see the Countesses of Exchester and Herfort (77). Thursday, the 19th. I came to see the duke at Withal, who took me to the queen's dinner, and then to dinner at his sister's, deaux by the king, who by his fort at Blaye had the command of the river, was not confirmed by the parlia ment of Bourdeaux, or, perhaps, that both these causes existed. As to the reprisals, it is possible that the citizens of London might have been encouraged to retaliate on the French before the actual breaking out of hostilities. Bassompierre says, afterwards, that he had obtained the release of seventy priests, and that he actually con veyed them to Calais. This seventy is, perhaps, a mis take for seventeen ; or it may be an exaggeration of Bas- sompierre's. The commission before mentioned speaks only of sixteen, and gives their names. The queen's French attendants, to the number of threescore, had been dismissed several months before. Bassompierre, in his Ambassades, gives the same list of priests as(Rymer. Here, as elsewhere, when I quote Stow for facts of this period, it is scarcely necessary to say that I mean the con- tinuator of Stow.

(77) Countess of Herfort. Daughter of the great Earl of Essex, and wife (after the death of Lady "Arabella Stuart) of William, Earl of Hertford, and, at the Restora tion, Duke of Somerset. She was probably born about 1594, and she died 1679. At this period she must have been about thirty-two years of age. h2 100 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

the Countess of Danbi(78). Afterwards the queen went to Sommerset, whither I accompanied her. Then I returned home to wait for the Venetian ambassador, who had desired me to do so. Friday, 20th. I went to see the Duchess of Lennox, and afterwards to look for my lord duke and Carleton, who was at Via- lenforaux (79). Saturday, 21st. I went to take leave of the Danish ambassador. Then the duke, the Earls of Suffolc (80), Carlile, and Hol-

(78) Countess qfDanbi. One might have doubted, on a mere inspection of the name, whether this was not the Countess of Danby, wife of Sir C. Danvers, created Earl of Danby on the 5th of February, 1626; but the sister of the Duke of Buckingham was the wife of William, first Earl of Denbigh.

(79) Vialenforaux. This travestie of Wallingford House (see note 51) may be put on a par with that which Walpole ( Anec. of P. 219.) celebrates of LHotel de Blai- fore, for the palace of Blackfriars. (Felibien, iii. 445.)

(80) Earl of Suffolc. Theophilus Howard, second Earl of Suffolk, succeeded his father, Thomas, in 1626, rmarried Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of George, Earl of Dunbar, and died in 1640. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 101 lande, my Lord Carleton, Montaigu, Goring, Cheri, St. Antoine(81), and Gentileschi (82), came to dine with me. The Earls of Ex- chester and Mandevil (83) came to bid me

(81) St. Antoine. " I made a present," says Sully (iii. 143), "to the king of England of six beautiful horses, richly caparisoned, and the Sieur de St. Antoine as their keeper." St. Antoine was first equerry to Prince Henry, and led a mourning horse at his funeral. (Birch, 527-) He was afterwards equerry to the king, and is painted by Vandyke holding the king's helmet, in the magnificent picture of Charles in armour on a white horse. (Anec. of P. 219.) The letter by which Henry the Fourth intro duced this equerry into the service of James is still pre served in the British Museum. Har. Lib. 1760. 12.

(82) Gentileschi. Horatio Gentileschi, a painter of note, patronised by the king and Buckingham. He died at the age of eighty-four, and was buried under the altar of the queen's chapel in Somerset House. One of the most beautiful pictures in the gallery of the Louvre, to veralmy taste, faults is in an it Annunciation ; but the submissive by this artist devotion : there and are hum se* ble ecstacy of the Virgin are, as they ought to be, truly divine. (Anec. of P. 241.)

(83) Lord Mandevil. Sir Henry Montague, Knight, Viscount Mandeville, Earl of Manchester. He was the grandson of Lord Chief Justice Montague, who had been left one of the executors of the will of Henry the Eighth. 102 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

farewell. We went to the Countess of Exchester's, where the high -treasurer's

He was bred to the law, and had passed through all the employments of that profession. About the accession of James, he was Recorder of London, and afterwards King's Serjeant ; and, finally, on the dismissal of Sir Edward Coke, 1616, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. On the 4th December, 1620, he obtained the office of Lord High Treasurer, by the favour, as Clarendon says, of Buckingham ; but not merely the general and uncontradicted opinion, but even the articles of impeach ment against the duke, charge him with having sold this office for 20,OOOJ. Montague held this important post not quite a year, being dismissed in Sept. 1621 ; and, on the 4th Dec. following, he was consoled with the idle dignity of President of the Council, and the title of Viscount Mandeville. He bore this retrograde promo tion with great temper, and thereby recovered so much favour as to be created Earl of Manchester, and made Lord Privy Seal, which office he held till his death. So says Clarendon : but it appears that he was created Earl of Manchester, 25th of Feb. 1625, and that he was not made Privy Seal till 1627. The rumour of the day Was, that the duke's mother (created Countess of Buck ingham) procured the office, and pocketed the bribe. Montague had received the White Staffs at Newmarket, (a part of the country in which there is no timber), which gave pleasantry to a question put to him, with ap parent simplicity, by a noble acquaintance, "Whether V^ wood was not extremely dear at Newmarket ?" The countesses influence was so considerable, that most TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 103 lady (84) was, and afterwards to see the queen in Sommerset. suitors preferred her intercession to Buckingham's, which gave occasion to Count Gondomar's witty, but profane ob servation ; that there were at last tolerable hopes of Eng land's 'conversion to the ritual of Rome, since he found that more devotion was now paid to the mother than to the son. A sarcasm which, however, derives all its point from the absurdity of Gondomar's own religion, which was also that of the countess, Mr. Seward, from Aubrey's MS., gives us a good jest of Lord Bacon's, but mars it a little in the telling. When Lord Manchester went, with an air of protection, to con dole with his old friend and fellow-lawyer, Lord Bacon, on that wonderful man's as wonderful reverse of fortune, *' Oh ! my lord," said Bacon, in the true cant of their common profession, and in allusion to the earl's fall up stairs, " it does not vex me, since they have made you a President," (precedent). Mr. Seward (Anec. 1, 232) tells the story as if Man chester, from being Chief Justice, had been at once made President of the Council, though the jest lies in the allu sion to the intermediate and higher honour which he had lost.

(84) High Treasurer \i lady. Jane, daughter of Lord Butler, by the Duke of Buckingham's sister. She was the third wife of James Ley, first Earl of Marlborough, and lord high treasurer of England. These honours were conferred on the earl in conse quence of his alliance with the favourite ; for — a perhaps unprecedented circumstance — the earldom was first en- 104 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

Sunday, 22d. I was at Secretary Cou- vai's, and afterwards at the queen's. The Danish ambassador came to take leave of me, and also my Lord Dissy (85), Monday, 23d. Viscount Semilton (Wim bledon), Goring, Chery(86), and others,

tailed on the issue of his third wife (By. xviii. 625) : she, however, never had any, and the son of a former mar riage succeeded.

(85) Lord Dissy. I cannot make out the peer to whom Bassompierre has given this comical title — it was not Lord Digby, because the father (now Earl of Bristol) was in the Tower, and his son was but fourteen years of age — nor Lord Denny, created, the 24th of October preceding, Earl of Norwich. (Bymer, xviii. 864.) Can it be Lord D'Arcy of Alston? (Peerage, ix. 471.) or Lord Denbigh, Buckingham's brother-in-law ? The latter is the more probable : This nobleman, a loyal subject, and good soldier, was killed in a skirmish with the parlia mentarians, in April, 1643.

(86) Chery. I have no doubt that this was one of the sons of the Earl of Monmouth ; and, as the elder brother was now Lord Leppington, this was probably Thomas Cary, gentleman of the king's bedchamber. We are not sur prised to find him in the society of painters and ingenious persons (see p. 101), for he was a literary man, the author of several poems, some of which have come down to us. He died a little after the king, of a broken heart for the TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 105 came to dine with me. Afterwards I was to take leave of the Dutch ambassador. fate of his royal master and friend, aged fifty-three ; so that he was now about thirty. It is said, (Bridges's Mem. 1, 434.) that Mr. Malone somewhere melts down into one, two poets of this age, Thomas Cary and Thomas Carew. I do not recollect the passage; but they are, I believe, sometimes con founded. Walpole mentions Thomas Carew, a wit and poet of the time, and gentleman of King Charles's privy chamber, whose portrait was painted by Vandyke, with that of Henry Killegrew. (Anec. 222.) I have some times doubted whether Thomas Carew was of the privy chamber, and suspected that his name was confounded with that of Thomas Cary, son of Lord Monmouth, gentle man of the bed-chamber, and the person (I have no doubt) mentioned in the text ; but there are so many evidences to show that Thomas Carew was honored with this office, that I can doubt no longer ; though certainly such a near similarity of christian and surnames, of talents, and charac ters, and offices, in two different persons, is, at first sight, very improbable. Rymer has preserved a grant of a pen sion of 500/. a year for life to Thomas Cary, groom of his majesty's bed-chamber, dated 28th of May, 1625. CFoed. xviii. 95.) Thomas Carew was the author of that beautiful song, so often reprinted, — "He that loves a rosie cheek." It is singular, that Mr. Campbell, in his late edition of fragments of the English Poets, should have inserted this poem — one of the best known in our language — twice over in the same volume ; once as the production of Carew, and again as that of an anonymous author. 106 BAS80MPIERRES EMBASSY

Tuesday, 24th. The duke, the Earl of Dorchet, Carleton, and others, dined with me. After dinner I went to see the queen at Sommerset. Wednesday, 25th. • I went to dine with the Earl of Hollande, at Stintinton (87). Thursday, 26th. The Earls of Brits- water and Salisberi came to see me. In the evening I went to see the queen in Som merset, who that day, in consideration of me, had a very great assembly ; then a ballet, and afterwards a collation of sweet meats. Friday, 27th. I sent off De Guette back to France, who, the day before, had committed an extravagance on behalf of the Bishop of Mandes (88). I went to Secre tary Couvai to get my despatches ; thence I went to the Exchange. Goring sent me two horses.

(87) Kensington.

(88) Bishop of Mandes. DuPlessis, Bishop of Mendes, in France, the queen's almoner, who had been lately sent away. His age, which was not thirty, and his manners, more* suitable to his age than his station, were not calcu lated to make him a fit adviser for the young queen, or to satisfy the just expectations of her husband and his subjects. Cur. of Lit. p. 414. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 107

Saturday, 28th. I went to take leave of the Venetian Ambassador. The Earl of Carlile and Goring dined with me. After wards we had my horses brought to the Morfield: thence I went to the queen's, where the king came. Sunday, 29th. The Earl of Carlile and Luchar came with the king's coaches to fetch me to take leave of their majesties, who gave me a public audience in the great saloon of Withal. I afterwards returned with him (the king), to his bedchamber, where he made me come in. Afterwards I went to sup in the apartment of the Earl of Carlile, who treated me magnificently. Lucnar came to bring me a very rich pre sent from the king, of four diamonds set in a lozenge, and a great stone at the end ; and the same evening sent again to fetch me to hear an excellent English play (89).

(89) Excellent English play. Though Bassompierre could have been no very good judge of the excellence of an English play, I cannot help wishing he had told us what it was. Perhaps one of Shakespeare's, whose patron Montgomery was Lord Chamberlain, in whose depart ment the choice of these amusements lay ; or more pro bably one of those exquisite masques of Jonson; which 108 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

Monday, 30th. I went to bid farewell to my Lord Montaigu ( Earl of Manchester),

carried theatrical lyric poetry to its highest flights. I know nothing in our language to compare in that style with the masques of Jonson : they have all the vigor and origin ality of the age in which they were composed, with almost all the neatness and delicacy of after times. Stow's account of the play-houses of London about this period is curious. "Also upon St. Peter's day last, the play-house, or theatre, called the Globe, upon the Bankside, neare London, by negligent discharging of a piece of ordnance, close to the south side thereof, the thatch tooke fire, and the wind sodainly disperst the flame round about, and in a very short space the whole building was quite consumed, and no man hurt; the house being filled with people to behold the play, viz. of Henry the Eight ; and the next spring it was new builded in farre fairer maner than before. " And about four yeeres after, a fayre strong new built play-house, near Goulding Lane, called the Fortune, by negligence of a candle, was cleane burnt to the ground, but shortly after re-built farre fairer. In the yeere 1629, there was builded a new fayre play-house, neere the Whitefryers ; and this is the seaventeenth stage, or com mon play-house, which hath beene new made within the space of threescore yeeres, within London and the suburbs, viz. " Five innes, or common osteryes, turned into play houses, one cockpit, St. Paule's singing schoole, one in the Blackfryers, and one in the Whitefryers, which was built last of all, in the yeere 1629 ; all the rest, not named, were erected only for common play-houses, besides the newr TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 109

President of the Council, and to the Earls of Pembroc and Montgomery, Exchester, and the countess his wife, and to the countess of Oxford, and Countess of Herfort, her daughter (90), and of my Lord Carleton ; thence I went privately to the queen's. Tuesday, the 1st day of December. I went to bid farewell to the agent of Bohe mia, and to the Earls of Hollande and of SufFolc, and of Salisbury ; then having also taken leave of the duke, I came home with the Earl of Hollande, who gave me three horses. He afterwards took me to see the built Beare-garden, which was built as well for plays, 'and fencer's prizes, as bull-bayting, besides one in the former time at Newington Buts. Before the space of threescore yeeres about sayed, I neither knew, heard, nor read of any such theaters, set stages, or play-houses as have been purposely built within man's memory." Stow, p. 1003.

(90) Her daughter. Here is some mistake. Lady Oxford had no child, and Lady Hertford was Frances Devereux, sister of Lord Essex. Nor can he mean that he visited Lady Hertford, and her daughter ; for though she had several, the eldest must have been, at this period, extremely young. It probably should run, " and to the Countess of Oxford, her (Lady Exeter's) daughter, and .the Countess of Hertfort." 110 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

house of (91) Mrs. Satton. I then went to bid farewell to the Earl of Dunolme, and to the Duchess of Lennox ; then to Withal, to bid farewell to the queen's maids (of honor). The king sent to desire that I should come to him at the queen his wife's, which I did, and then took a second leave of him. The queen desired me to come to see her again on the morrow. Thence the duke, Hollande, Montaigu, and the Chevalier de Jars, took me to the Countess of Exchester's, who gave us a magnificent entertainment, and a ball after. Wednesday. The Earl of Barcher (92)

(91) The minute inquisitive Evelyn does not notice any house of Mrs. Satton, which could be worth visiting. Can Bassompierre mean the "house of Mr. Sutton," namely the Charter-house, founded in 1614, and which, even down to 1656, when Evelyn visited it, was still an object of curiosity ?

(92) The Earl of Barcher. This, I suppose, must mean the Earl of Berkshire. Thomas Norrys Lord Norrys had been advanced to this title, 28th June, 1620 ; but in no long time after, he in a fit of rage and despondency put an end to his existence, with a cross-bow. I suppose he must be about the last man who was killed by that obsolete TO ENGLAND IN 1626. Ill came to bid me farewell, and then the whole of the queen's household. The Earl of Suffolc sent me a horse. I went to take leave of the queen, who gave me a very fine diamond. I afterwards took leave of the ladies of the bedchamber ; and I after wards went to the Earl of Carlile's, who had hurt (93) himself very much in the head the evening before. Then I came to the duke's apartment, where I stayed long enough waiting for my despatches, and the letters which the king had promised me, to abolish the pursuivants (94) of England. Finally, I took leave of the duke ; and, accompanied

weapon. In 1625, this title was revived in favour of Thomas Howard, Viscount Andover, second son of the Earl of Suffolk, (Rymer, xviii. 284.) who is the person here meant.

(93) Considering the jovial earl's known conviviality, one is not much surprised at this accident.

(94) He means the persecution of the papists, of which the officers, called pursuivants, were the most usual instru ments. There are several ecclesiastical commissions, in which the pursuivants are directed to act against papist recusants. Rym. xviii. 124. 922. 112 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

only by Lucnar and the Chevalier de Jars, having sent my people on before, I got into one of the queen's carriages, and came to sleep at Gravesende. Thursday, 3d. To Sittimborne, and thence to Cantorbery. Saturday, 5th. I arrived at Dover with an equipage of four hundred persons, who were to cross with me, including seventy (95) priests, whom I had delivered from prison in England. I had resolved to bear the expenses of all those who were going to France (96) with me, thinking that I might have embarked the same day that I arrived at Dover ; but a storm detained me four teen days at Dover, which cost me 14,000 crowns. I arrived at Dover to dinner, and, had my equipage embarked, thinking to cross the sea, but it was adverse.

(95) Seventy. (See note 75.) I believe seventeen would have been nearer the truth.

(96) The marshal is an honest memorialist ; he tells us that he intended to be generous only to a certain ex tent, and does not conceal his disappointment at finding his liberality put to such an unexpected trial. TO ENGLAND IN J 626. 113

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, (I was detained), when the duke sent Montaigu to me to apprise me, that it was him (the duke) whom the king was about to send to France ; which I advised him against, so far as giving him to understand that he would not be received (97) ; and I sent off Mon taigu in all haste towards him.

(97) Not received. A pretty broad hint .' The cha racter of a favourite has always been so odious, that the opinion of Buckingham's passion for the queen, Anne of Austria, having been the cause of the war between France and England, obtained ready currency at the time, and has lasted to our day. But we have already seen causes of war arising out of circumstances over which Buckingham had no control. Hostilities had already in fact taken place, ships on both sides had been seized, and French rebels had been received and countenanced in England. Soubise, against whom Louis had complained by at least two em bassies, was furnished at this critical juncture with a royal commission to levy men and ships, under pretence of their being to be employed against Spain, (Ry. xviii. 766) ; and finally, the protestants in France had long been negotiating for the assistance of England; all these cir cumstances are surely enough to account for the war; and, in fact, Buckingham's foolish passion would rather have inclined him to peace. We accordingly see, all through this embassy, that he generally favoured the I 114 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

Wednesday, 9th. We embarked at two in the morning; but the storm treated us

ambassador ; and that he himself wanted to return to the court of France, under the pretence, no doubt, of preventing hostilities, and probably with the real wish of seeing the queen — a pleasure he could only enjoy by keeping the two countries on good terms. It is, however, impossible to doubt that Buckingham had the audacity to entertain, and even to avow, im proper sentiments of tenderness towards the French queen; for Madame de Motteville, the creature and apologist of Anne of Austria, plainly admits the ex istence of this impertinent passion. Every one knows, that, during the stay of the prince and Buckingham in France, on their return out of Spain, the behaviour of the latter towards Anne of Austria was so bold and offensive as to give umbrage to Louis XIII. ; and after they had proceeded on their way home, (hastened away by the jealousy of the French court), Buckingham had the romantic and almost incredible audacity to steal back, (leaving the prince on the road), and make his way in secret, and at an undue hour, even into the bed-cham ber of the queen, whence, after a scene of intreaties, tears, and vows, (permitted, accepted, but, as it would seem, not requited), the amorous duke again took post, and made the best of his way back to join his royal and patient The fellow-traveller.duke's vexation at his dismissal was so great, that he was heard to declare that he would come to France again in spite of the jealous husband ; which, TO ENGLAND IN 162C. 115 so that we were driven towards Dieppe ; afterwards forced to come back, and land however, neither as friend nor foe was he able to accom plish. There was here foundation enough for malice to trace the French war to the personal resentment of Bucking ham ; but (though, perhaps, this may have sharpened his enmity), with so much evidence of other sufficient causes of difference between the two courts, it would be going too far to admit this folly as the primum mobile of the war. That the death of Louis and Buckingham should have rendered this subject less delicate, I can well under stand ; but one is not prepared to find it treated so boldly, so publicly, and so lightly, as we learn from a passage of Madame de Motteville's Memoirs that it was. The queen mother, happening one day to meet Voi- ture, musing in the garden at Ruel, asked him what he was thinking of; to which the wit immediately replied, ".in the following bold and agreeable verses, at which the queen was not at all offended ; and she thought them so pretty, that she kept them for a long time after in her cabinet." Memoires de Motteville, ], 281.

Je pensois que la destinee, Apres tant d'injustes malheurs, Vous a justement couronnee De gloire, d'eclat, et d'honneurs : Mais que vous etiez plus heureuse, Lorsque vous etiez autrefois, — Je ne veux pas dire amoureuse,— La rime le veut toutefois. — i 2 116 BASSOMPIERRE'S EMBASSY

near Dover, whither we returned ; of which the Chevalier de Jars, who had left me on the pier when I embarked, was apprised by his man, who had remained sick at Dover, and did not depart till my embarkation from the said Dover. The duke, who was apprised by him of my detention at Dover, sent Montaigu, on Saturday the 12th, to visit me, and to beg of me to return as far as Cantorbery, whither he would come next day, Sunday the 13th ; as he did, with the Earls of Carlile and Hollande, Goring, and the Chevalier de Jars. He would show me his magnificence, by the splendid entertainment he gave me

Je pensois ; — car nous autres Poetes Nous pensons extravagamment, Ce que dans Phumeur ou vous etes, Vous feriez, si dans ce moment Vous avisiez en cette place Venir le Due de Bokingham t — Et lequel seroit en disgrace De lui ou du Pere Vincent ? — Le Pere Vincent, over whom Voiture supposed the duke would gain so easy a victory, was the queen's con fessor. There is another stanza, but it is not woith quoting. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 117 in the evening, with whom I spent all the time after supper in persuading him to break off or delay his journey. Monday, 14th. I continued the same proceeding, against which he was wholly bent. All that I could do, was to make him delay till he should hear from me by Gerbier (98), whom he sent with me. He

(98) Gerbier. The Anecdotes of Painting (p. 189, et seq.) give an amusing, but decousu, and not altogether con sistent, account of Gerbier, one of those eminent artists to whom the taste or policy of Buckingham extended his pow erful patronage and friendship ; and I am rather surprised that Mr. Walpole, who, on another occasion, quotes Bas- sompierre, omitted to add to the evidence which Vertue had collected, this additional proof of his confidential con nexion with the duke. Sir Balthazar Gerbier was born at Antwerp, in 1591 ; and so early as 1613 was a retainer of Buckingham's. He was an excellent penman, and painted figures in distemper ; and Buckingham's love for and skill in the fine arts probably attached Gerbier to his service. He certainly accompanied him in the journey into Spain, for the duke's lady writes to him : " I pray, if you have any idle time, sit to Gerbier, that I may have it done in little." Gerbier, though ostensibly only a painter, was em ployed in the treaty of marriage ; and at Charles's acces- 118 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY

gave me again at dinner a feast as superb as the supper of the evening before. Then

sion was employed privately to negotiate a treaty with Spain in Flanders ; that very treaty which, on the part of the Infanta,. Rubens was sent to England to conduct. Gerbier's life was long, and busy. Mr. Walpole sus pects, on very insufficient evidence, that he wrote a libel on Charles the First, which would prove him a monster of ingratitude. I do not believe in monsters ; and Gerbier's character appears to be fully vindicated, on this point, by a curious little book which was discovered after the first edition of Walpole's Anecdotes, called " Effets pernicieux de meschans favoris et grands ministres d'etat des pro vinces Belgiques en Lorraine, Germanie, France, Italy, Espagne, et Angleterre, et desabuses d'erreurs populaires, sur le subjects des Roy Jacques et Charles Stuart, Roys de la Grande Bretagne. Par le Chev. B. Gerbier, a la Haye, 1653." In which, strange to say, he excuses all the favourites of James and Charles, and lays all the blame of favouritism on their opponents ! Gerbier returned with Charles the Second, and de signed the arches of triumph and other splendors of the Restoration. In this department he had been employed by Buckingham ; and the magnificence and taste of the duke's ballets, and entertainments, were probably the works of Gerbier's fancy. Walpole seems very un willing to give up his original mistake about Gerbier's venality and ingratitude ; of the injustice of which, his own subsequent editions, and latterly Mr. D'Israeli's re searches in the Museum, afford abundant proof. Cur. of Lit. 3. TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 119

we embraced, never to see each other again. I found, on my return to Dover, that my suite had sailed ; but they ran such chances, that for five days they could not reach Calais, and that they were obliged to throw my two carriages into the sea, in which there unluckily was more than 40,000 francs worth of clothes (99), which I had bought in England to give away. I lost, moreover, twenty-nine horses, who died of thirst,

Gerbier was the first proposer of an academy of the fine arts in England. Whitelock tells us, under date of the 14th Feb. 1649, " that Sir B. Gerbier set up his academy in Whitefriars, for the teaching all manner of arts and sciences, — a good design if the conduct and success had been answerable." After the Restoration, he renewed this attempt and again failed ; and I cannot think his failure' any loss to the arts. Academies are in truth only schools Jbr mediocrity. Their tendency is to raise the dull, and to depress the clever to the same level. Our Royal Academy has inundated us with shoals of tolerable painters; but has it advanced or improved genius? I believe not.

(99) We generally flatter ourselves that the English manufactures have, during the last century, quite out stripped those of the continent, yet, what ambassador, re turning home now a days, carries 40,000 francs worth of clothes for presents ? 120 BASSOMPIERRES EMBASSY during these five days, because they had made no provision of fresh water for their passage, which in fine weather, does not last above three hours. I found it impos sible to embark before Friday the 18th, when I sailed with a high wind, and got to dine at Calais, where I stayed the rest of the day to recover myself from sea sickness. Saturday, 19th. I took post and came to Montreuil. Sunday, 20th. I came to Amiens, where M. de Chaulnes gave me a magnificent reception (100), firing the guns of the citadel,

(100) Salutes were formerly fired with the guns shotted, and sometimes not without danger to the persons so ho noured ; Mile, de Montpensier tells us, I think, of an in stance in which she was so saluted, to the great discomfort of her attendants, both men and women ; and she gives a remarkable one, in which the Fort de la Scarpe, at Douai, fired ball in honor of the passage of Louis XIV., and some of the shot passed near his coach. (Mem. de Montp. v. 329.) And Whitelock, in giving an account of some re joicing for one of Cromwell's victories, tells us, the ships at Portsmouth fired great and small shotonthe occasion. Such a practice seems to us quite absurd, and yet was founded in a kind of reason. Salutes and salutations were, in their origin, marks of submission. We take off our hats, because TO ENGLAND IN 1626. 121 and gave me an entertainment with twenty ladies ; and then lodged me superbly. He detained me the next morning, the 21st, so that I came to sleep that night only to Louvre (101), on account of the com pliments which delayed me. Tuesday, 22d. I arrived at Paris, where I found that the coming of the Duke of Boukinkam was not agreeable; and the queen desired me to write to let him know that his coming would not be agreeable to her, and that he should desist from it. of old the conquered took off their helmets ; we bow, be cause the vanquished were used to bend their necks to the conqueror ; and salutes were fired, shot and all, that the place or ship might be thereby without means of present defence. Thus, from the bloody forms of the turbulent ages are derived the ceremonies of polished life.

(101) I suspect some mistake here. Louvres is thirteen posts from Amiens, or about 60 or 70 miles, so that if Bassompierre had reached that place, he need hardly have complained of getting no further. It would have been by much the longest day's journey he had made during his whole mission.

APPENDIX.

No. 1.

I have referred in note 14 to two letters quoted by Mr. Se ward; but on reference to the originals in the British Museum (to which I was kindly directed by Mr. D' Israeli) I was sorry to find that Mr. Seward had copied the letters very incorrectly. My readers will here find them in a perfect state, and I have also added from the same source the ostensible instruction referred to in the king's private letter to Buckingham of the 20 November, 1625.— Hakleian MSS. 6983.

Steenie *, I WRiTT to you by Ned Clarke, that I thought I would have cause anufe in shorte tyme to put away the Mongers, ether by atemting to steale away my wyfe, or by making plots with my owen subjects. For the first, I cannot say certainlie whether it was intended, but I am sure it is hin dered ; for the other, though I haue good grounds to belife it, & am still hunting after it, yet seing daylie the malitius- ness * A of familiar the Monsers, name first given by making by James toand the fomenting Duke of Buckingham, discontent- from

a resemblance which he saw in young Villiers to a picture of St. Stephen, whose name he affectionately contracted into Steenie. 124 APPENDIX. merits in my wyfe, I could tarie no longer from adverticing of you that I mean to seeke for no other grounds to easier (cashier) my Monsers, having for this porpose sent you this other letter, that you may, if youthinke good, advertice the queene-mother with my intention ; for this being an action that may have a show of harshness, I thought it was fitt to take this way, that she to whome I have had manie obliga tions may not take it unkyndlie ; & lykwayes I thinke I have done you no wrong in my letter, though in some place of it I may seeme to chyde you. I pray you send mee word, with what speed you may, whither ye lyke this cource or not, for I shall put nothing of this in execution while I heere frome you. In the meanetyme I shall think of the con veniens meanes to doe this business with the best mine, but I am resolved it must be done, & that shortlie. So, longing to see thee, I rest Your loving, faithfull, constante frend, Charles R. the Hampton 20 of Nov. cowrie, 1625.

Steenie, You knowe what patience I haue had with the unkynde usages of my wyfe, grounded upon a beliefe that it was not in her nature, but made by yll instruments, and overcome by your persuations to me that my kinde usages would be able to rectifie those mysunderstandings. I hope my grownd may be trewe; but I am sure you have erred in yor opinyon, for I fynde daylie worse and worse effects of ill offices done be- tweene us, my kynde usages havinge noe power to mend any thinge. Nowe necessitie urges me to vent myselfe to you in this particular, for griefe is eased being tould to a frend ; and because I haue manie obligations to my mother-in-law (knowinge that these courses of my wyfe are so much against her knowledge that they are contrarie to her advice,) I APPENDIX. 125

would doe nothinge concernynge her daughter that may tast of any harshnesse, without aduertysinge her of the reasons & necessities of the thinge ; therefore I haue chosen you for this purpose, because you having beene one of the cheefe causes that haue witheld me from these courses hitherto, you may well be one of my cheefe witnesses, that I have bynne forced into these courses nowe. You must, therefore, ad- uertyse my mother-in-lawe that I must reraoue all those instruments that are causes of unkyndnesse betweene her daughter and me, feawe or none of her servants being free of this faulte in one kynde or other ; therefore I would be glad that she myght fynd a meanes to make themselues sutors to be gone. If this be not, I hope there can be no exceptions taken at me to follow the example of Spayne and Savoye in this particular. So requiring of thee a speedie answer of this businesse, (for the longer it is delayd the worse it will growe,) I rest Your lovinge, faythfull, constant frend, the 20th Hampton of November, Court, 1625. C. R.

Steenie, I haue receaued your letter by Die Greame — this is my answer : — I command you to send all the French away to morrow out of the toune, if you can by faire meanes (but stike not longe in disputing,) otherways force them away, dryving them away lyke so manie wyld beastes untill ye haue shipped them, and so the devill goe with them. Lett me heare no answer, but of the performance of my command. So I rest, Your faithful], constant, loving frend, Charles R, Oaking, the 7 of August, 1626. 126 APPENDIX.

No. 2.

Extracts from the Treaty of Marriage signed at Paris the lOtk November, 1625.

VII. The free exercise of the Roman catholic apostolic religion shall be granted to Madame, as likewise to all the children that shall be born of this marriage. VIII. To that end Madame shall have a chapel in all the royal palaces, and in every place of the King of Great Britain's dominions where she or he shall reside. IX. The said chapel shall be beautified with decent ornaments, and the care and custody thereof shall be committed to such as Madame shall appoint. The preaching of God's Word and the administration of the sacraments shall be entirely free ; and the mass, and the other parts of divine service, shall be celebrated according to the custom of the holy Roman church, with all jubilees and indulgences which Madame shall procure from Rome. There shall be also a church yard allowed in the city of London, where, according to the custom of the Roman church, such of Madame's attendants shall be buried as happen to die, which shall be done in a modest manner. The said churchyard shall be enclosed, that it may not be profaned. X. Madame shall have a bishop for her almoner, who shall have all necessary authority and jurisdiction in all things be longing to religion ; and shall have power to proceed accord ing to the canons against such as shall be under his charge. APPENDIX. 127

And in case the civil court shall lay hold on any of the said ecclesiastics for some state crime, and information be made against him, he shall be sent to the said bishop with the in formations and proceedings, .and the said bishop after de grading him shall put him again into the hands of the secular court. For any other crimes the civil court shall send back the said ecclesiastic to the bishop, who shall proceed against him according to the canons. And in case of absence Or sickness, the bishop's vicar shall have the same authority. XI. Madame shall have in her house twenty-eight priests or ecclesiastics, almoners and chaplains included, to serve in her chapel, and if there are any regulars they shall wear the habit of their order. XII. The king and prince shall oblige themselves by oath not to attempt by any means whatever to persuade Madame to change her religion, or to engage her in any thing repugnant to it. XIV. All the domestics Madame shall bring into England shall be French catholics, chosen by the Most Christian King ; and in the room of those that shall die she shall take other French catholics, with the consent, however, of the King of Great Britain. XIX. The children which shall be born of this marriage shall be brought up by Madame, their mother, till the age of thirteen years.

Private or secret Articles.

1. That the catholics, as well ecclesiastics as temporal, imprisoned since the last proclamation which followed the breach with Spain, should all be set at liberty. 128 APPENDIX.

2. That the English catholics should be no more searched after nor molested for their religion. 3. That the goods of the catholics, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, that were seized since the forementioned pro clamation, should be restored to them.

No. 3.

Extracts from the Treaty of Dispensation. The King of England not choosing or not daring to treat directly ■with the Pope, it was agreed — as a mezzo termine to satisfy, if not the conscience, at least the dignity of the pontiff — that the King of France should engage on the part of the King •of Englandjbr those points on which the latter could not directly negotiate. Such are the miserable shifts to which the greatest mo- narchs of the world were driven by a power which they disavowed in terms, resisted in substance, and submitted to inform. The whole of this treaty is remarkable, but it will be enough to quote some of the principal articles.

Conveniunt, ut serenissima III. Madama Henrietta Maria om-

riesque ejus domestici, familiares, servi, necnon domi, fo- risque ministri et familia universa familiarium eidem pro tempore serventium, eorumque filii et descendentes libere profited et exercere possint religionem apostolicam catholi- cam Romanam ; ac propterea non solum Londini sed etiam in omnibus locis et regnis ipsi regi Magnae Britanniae sub- Jectis, in cunctis regis ipsius palatiis et ubicunque praedicta Madama habitaverit aut extiterit, habeat unam ecclesiam sive sacellum capax et amplum, cum sufficientibus et commodis APPENDIX. 129

aditibus, non solum ad usum duntaxat Madamae ac eju» nobilioris families, verum etiam familiae humilioris et infimae ; heec autem ecclesia sive sacellum secundum ecclesiae catho licae Romanae ritum et usum, decenter ornari debeat ; ejusque custodia et cura sit quibus ipsa Madama voluerit demandari ; atque in eadem ecclesia seu sacello sacramenta ecclesiae catholicae apostolicae Romanae administrabuntur. Sacro-» sanctum sacrificium offeretur, verbi Dei conciones habebun- tur, et divina officia solemniter etiam ritu ejusdem Romanae ecclesiae celebrabuntur; ibidem jubilaea, atque indulgentiae, que ab ecclesia. Romana emanarunt vel pro tempore emana-i bunt, publicabuntur peragi et acquiri poterunt juxta eorura tenores et concessionum formas, et ubicunque ipsa Madama extiterit, et quotiescunque voluerit sacro-sancto isto sa-> crificio, ac divinis ecclesiae Romanae officiis quibuscumque, etiam cum suis interesse, poterit. Pro sepultura vero uni- versorum Madamae familiarium conventum, ut assignetur caemiteriis locus Romano ritu benedicendus signo sanctae crucis et sanctorum imaginibus munitus juxta morem ec clesiae catholicae apostolicae Romanae, nullis contumeliis aut prophanis expositus, sed parietibus circumseptus, et ab eo quern serenissima Madama seu episcopus in ordine episcopali a summo pontifice Romano constitutus deputabunt custo- diendus. IV. Conveniunt ut serenissima Madama, perpetuo penes se habeat episcopum in ordine episcopali, a summo pontifice Romano constitutum qui officio magni elemosinarii fungatur, munera episcopalia in ecclesia seu sacello Madamae expleat et omnem jurisdictionem et auctoritatem habeat necessariam et exerceat, ut ea quae catholicae apostolicae religionis sunt sacra et immunia jura ecclesiae seu sacelli praedicti Madamae expleat tueri, et ecclesiasticos secundum sacros canones regere et in eosdem delinquentes animadvertere possit ; quos si curia secularis apprehenderit praedicto eorum epis-> K 130 APPENDIX. copo confestim eos tradat, ab ipso judicandos. Absente autem, impedito vel deficiente episcopo, vicarius generalis ab eo deputatus eandem penitus habeat, si ita episcopo videbitur, jurisdictionem. V. Conveniunt ut in aula serenissimae Madamae commorentur ultra episcopum praedictum viginti octo sacerdotes catholici Romani ad inserviendum ecclesiee, seu sacello supra dicto, ejusque sacris ministeriis, de quorum numero sint capellani eteleemosinariiejusdem serenissimae Madamae, utque omnes de illius familia censeantur, honcsta et congrua pensione sustineantur, atque habitum suae dignitatis, professionis aut instituti ubique retineant, publiceque deferant juxta morem ac ritum sanctae Romanae ecclesiae. VI. Conveniunt ut Rex Magnae Britannia ac Princeps Walliae, ejus filius, se juramento et in verbo regis et principis ob- stringant, quod neque directe neque indirecte serenissimae Madamae Henriettas Marias aut cujuspiam illius familiarum animum tentabunt, ut a catholica apostolica ecclesia Romana deficiant, aut aliquid etiam minimum ab ea alienum com- mittant. VII. Conveniunt ut liberorum qui ex regio hoc matrimonio nascentur cura et educatio, omni modo, ex eorum ortu usque ad annum aetatis decimum tertium completum ad Madamam illorum matrem pertineat, ac omnes personae proli ministe- rium quodcumque praestiturae usque ad annum tertium deci mum completum, ut supra, eL praedicta Madama libere eli- gantur, atque ejusdem familias annumerentur juribusque et privilegiis aliorum familiarium gaudeant et potiantur. IX. Serenissimus Rex Magnae Britanniac, ut singularem ilium amorem quo serenissimam Madamam Henriettam Mariam complectitur universis testatum faciat, concedit ex nunc om APPENDIX. 131 nibus et singulis catholicam Romanam ecclesiam tenentibus et profitentibus in ejus ditione vel regnis degentibus, give subditi sive exteri fuerint, ut deinceps perpetue securi et a cuncto periculo immunes vivant, bonis suis i'ruantur, et nullo unquam tempore publice vel privatim molestiam patiantur, ex eo quod catholicam religionem profiteantur et exerceant, atque ut catholici preedicti hanc Magna; Britannia? regis benignitatem cognoscant, omnibus haec suae majestatis con- cessio notificabitur, statim atque matrimonii ejusmodi prse- sentis articuli fuerint obsignati.

No. 4.

To the articles of this treaty, when communicated to James, he replied seriatim. I only extract the answers to the articles above quoted. It will be observed that the numeration of the articles in this answer do not correspond with those of the treaty — this must have arisen from some clerical error, which it is not worth while to attend to, as the meaning and references are obvious.

Quant au troisieme les choses sont accordees par le sixieme article dudit traitte, et pour celle de Londres, elle est deja batie, capable et telle que les Espagnols s'en conten- toient; quant au cimetiere il est deja accorde par ledit article, selon l'usage de l'Eglise, et nous l'accordons ainsi, pourvu que Ton en use modestement, et trouvons bons qu'il soit informe & cet effet. Dans le quatrieme il est dit que le 7 article dudit traitte k 2 132 APPENDIX. porte que Madame aura un Evesque, dont nous demeurons d'accord. Pour la jurisdiction elle est aussi accordée dans le 7. article dudit traitté, et telle qu'elle se pratique même en France, c'est pourquoy nous nous étonnons comme l'on nous en demande davantage, estant impossible d'en obtenir plus, lesdits ecclésiastiques n'ayant aucun pouvoir de punir de mort les assassinateurs et ceux qui ont commis semblables crimes. Quant au cinquiesme il n'y a nulle difficulté, y ayant été satisfait par le huitiesme article dudit traitté. Nous avons aussi satisfait au sixiesme, ayant baillé tout ce que vous nous avez demandé, selon qu'il est accorde au neuf- viesme article du traitté ; et pour la liberté qui est demandée pour les officiers nous nous étonnons comme on demande plus d'asseurance, puisque le libre exeroice leur est baillé par le sixiéme article dudit traitté, auquel nous nous remettons. Le septiesme article est déjà accordé par le sixiesme, qu'elle aura soin de nourrir ses enfans jusqu'à l'âge de treize ans, partant qui ne doute, qu'elle aura le choix des personnes qui seront pres d'eux. Touchant le Qme, on sçait trop bien que nous ne sçaurions passer outre, et ne pouvons, ny ne voulons y rien adjouster ny changer ; c'est pourquoy nous nous tenons a ce qui à esté arresté entre nous.

No. 5.

From a tract in the Museum, called " a Brief Discourse of the Embassy of Marshal Bassompierre," [Har. Mans. 1323), I have copied the marshal' sfrst nbte of complaint — the tract itself though by its title it would seem to be by an English hand, is evidently a APPENDIX. 133 translation front the French, and written by a person in the French interest ; it contains little novelty, and is for the greater part filled with documents which are to be found in the Am- bassades.

The marshall, following his instructions, gave unto the king's commissioners a wryteinge, conteyninge theis prin- cipall poyntes following, whereof he was to confer with them. By the articles agreed upon, (as quoted in the " Reply of the British Commissioners," which follow,) the which were signified the 20th November, 1624, and since interlarded within the bill of contract of marryage of the princesses, Kinge and Queene of Great Brittayne, the 8th of May, in the yeare following, and the same hath been agayne rattified by his majestie himself, to the which he hath promised and sworne inviolable observation. , It hath been also promised by the most mightye kinge, Kinge James of happie memorye, in an acte of parliament the 12th November, 1624, that all his catholique subjects should enjoye freedom of their religion, and all good usage that might be by virtue of the articles that were agreed on m the treatye of marriage with Spayne ; the which acte was confirmed by his highness the prince, his Sonne, and since that by himself coming to the crowne, by an acte of con firmation in London the 18 July, 1625. The marriage betweene the most highe and mightye Charles, Kinge of Great Brittayne, and Lady Henrietta Maria, his wyfe, being most happily accomplished to the unanimous contentment on both sides, with observation of the articles concerninge religion, and principallye concern- ynge his majestie, with oath made on the Evangelists, the Most Christian King hath had cause to thinke and believe by the effects following that they haue not beene soe finnely obserued. Therefore his Majestie Most Christian hath not 134 APPENDIX. receiued any news that hath or could more haue troubled his minde then those that hee hath receiued, concernynge the King of Great Brittan's usage of the officers belonginge unto his wyfe, commanding them from her person, and fol lowing on to the chasing them out of the land. Butt as theis proceedings are not conformable to the good opinion that his Most Christian Majesty hath conceyued of the happiness and felicitye of his sister's beinge marryed to a prince of soe honourable a disposicion as hee is ; and that his Majestie cherished and held in particular esteeme his generositye, and other particularityes which are in his per son ; soe, likewise, hee cannott bee persuaded that the kinge, his brother-in-lawe, who, amonge all his other virtues, hath euer till nowe been observed and esteemed the most justest in keepeinge of his worde to whomesoeuer he had giuen it most royallie, should neglect that which is founded on the agree ments of solemn wedlocke, which ought to bee most respect fully kept and maintayned in all poynts. And this chiefly, because that hee hath stipulated with a prince soe stronglye allyed, soe good a brother, and most hartye friende as hee is ; for as much as that instead of makeinge a bonde and stronger tye by this alliance, and to unyte more and more the harts and interests of the said two kings, this would serve to sowe the seedes of discord and dissention betweene the two crownes, in a tyme that they ought to be the more friendy and straightlye conjoyned by the assistance of the princes their allies, and for their own proper conservation. This is the cause that hath moved the Most Christian Kinge to send an extraordinarye ambassador, the Marshall Bassomepeir, unto the Kinge of Great Brittayne, his brother- in-lawe, for to demand on his part for the establishing on his part of the contraventions of the said tracts and contracts, to the which hee is obliged for the assurance of the conscyence of the queene, his sister, and for the particuler reputation, which is to bee desired that the fayth that hath been pro APPENDIX. 185 mised might bee faythfully kept, and which cannot bee vyolated without much misprise. < Furthermore, the said Most Christian Kinge excites, and most particularly prayes the Kinge of Great Brittayne, that by the virtue of the assurance and promises that hee hath made to him, that he will ordayne a better and more mode rate usage of his subjects proffessinge the catholique aposto- licall Roman religion, unto the which two poynts the said Lord Marshall Bassompeir humblye intreates his majestie, that hee may carry back with him a suddayne and favourable answere unto the kinge, his majestie, which hee desires and attendes from the kinge, his brother-in-lawe, agreeinge to what hee hath promised and contracted with him. Signed, Bassomfiehre.

No. 6.

Reply of the Commissioners of his Majesty the King of Great Britain, to the Proposition presented by Monsr. le Mareschal de Bassompierre, Ambassador Extraordinary from his Most Christian Majesty. This document is to be found both in the Ambassades and the Brief Discourse.

It is not to be denied, that, as is alleged in the first place by the ambassador, according to the articles agreed upon between the Commissioners of his Most Christian Majesty the King of France and Navarre, on one hand, and the late 136 APPENDIX.

King of Great Britain, James the First, of happy memory, on the other, for the marriage of the most serene Prince of Wales, and Madame Henriette Marie, sister of his Most Christian Majesty, it was expressly promised, that the said princess, and all her household, should enjoy the free exercise of the catholic religion ; that she should have a bishop and a number of priests to perform the service of the said religion ; and that all the servants and officers of her household should be French Roman catholics, selected by his Most Christian Majesty ; and that in the event of any of them dying, or being changed, or sent back, their places should be supplied by other French, or (as is expressed in the article) English catholics, provided his Majesty the King of Great Britain should consent thereto. The establishment and execution of which conditions were so particularly observed on the part of his Majesty, that there appeared no ground of com plaint until the dismissal of the French attendants took place ; .by which step, however, it "is conceived, that neither the letter nor spirit of the agreement has been violated ; the said persons having been sent back as offenders, who had by their ill conduct disturbed, in the first place, the affairs of the kingdom ; and, secondly, the domestic government of the house of his Majesty, and of the queen his dearly beloved consort; luhereon depended the happiness of their lives. In proof whereof, it will be sufficient, amongst other in stances, to particularize the following ; The Bishop of Mande and his priests, (to whom the ambassador, Monsieur de Blainville, also lent his hand), have endeavoured, by their intrigues, to create factions and dissensions among the subjects of his Majesty, exciting fear and mistrust in the Protestants, encouraging the Roman Catholics, and even instigating the disaffected in Parliament against every thing connected with the service of the king, and the public tranquillity of the kingdom, APPENDIX. 137

Some French officers lent their names to others, for the purpose of taking houses in the fields, where, under their protection, the priests had their retreat, and performed mass in illegal assemblies, and where young women and children were brought up for the purpose of being afterwards sent out of the kingdom to the Spanish seminaries. The queen's house they converted into a rendezvous of Jesuits and fugitives, and a place of security for the persons, property, and papers of such as had violated our laws. ■ By subtle means they discovered what was passing in private between the king and the queen, whom they obliged to follow their advice in every thing that was proposed to her, or required of her, by his majesty. They laboured to create in the gentle mind of the queen a repugnance to all that his majesty desired or ordered, even to what he did for the honor of his dignity, and for the com fort and establishment of his household, and avowedly fo mented discords between their majesties, as a thing essential to the welfare of their church. They have endeavoured by all means to inspire her with a contempt for our nation, and a dislike of our habits ; and have made her neglect the English language, as if she neither had, nor wished to have, any common interest amongst us, who desire nothing more than to promote the happiness and the service of her majesty. They introduced, by means of the priests, strange orders and regulations, unheard of in times past, and disapproved of by others of their profession. They had subjected the person of the queen to the rules of an, as it were, monastic obedience, in order to oblige her to do many base and servile acts, which. were not only un worthy of the majesty of a queen, but also very dangerous to her health ; witness what has befallen a person of distinction amongst her attendants, who died thereof, and complained at her death that that was the cause of it. 188 APPENDIX.

They abused the influence which they had acquired over the tender and religious mind of her majesty, so far as to lead her a long way on foot, through a park, the gates of which had been expressly ordered by the Count de Tilliers to be kept open, to go in devotion to a place ( Tyburn) where it has been the custom to execute the most infamous malefactors and criminals of all sorts, exposed on the entrance of a high road ; an act, not only of shame and mockery towards the queen, but of reproach and calumny of the king's predecessors of glorious memory, as accusing them of tyranny in having put to death innocent persons, whom these people look upon as martyrs ; although, on the contrary, not one of them had been executed on account of religion, but for high treason. And it was this last act above all, which provoked the royal resentment and anger of his majesty beyond the bounds of his patience, which, until then, had enabled him to support all the rest ; but he could now no longer endure to see in his house and in his kingdom people, who, even in the person of his dearly beloved consort, had brought such a scandal upon his religion ; and violated in such a manner the respect due to the sacred memory of so many great monarchs, his illus trious predecessors, upon whom the Pope had never at tempted, nor had ever been able, to impose such a mark of indignity, under pretext of penitence, or submission due to his see. Nevertheless, his majesty, all the time that he was exposed to the insolence of these people, still persevered in shewing the desire he felt to preserve a good understanding and friendship with his dear brother the most christian king; and with this view confined himself, in the first instance, to complaining of their disorders ; and afterwards admonishing them, in the hope of amendment. But finding that all this was ineffectual, he commissioned the Duke of Buckingham to go from Holland into France, to give full information of these matters; conceiving him to be the most proper agent of this APPENDIX. 139

commission ; and that he, who had contributed so much to the accomplishment of the marriage, would use all possible care to remove this misunderstanding, and to prevent all occasions of displeasure and jealousy. But this journey having been pre vented by the intimation, which was given to the duke, that the king (of France) was averse to it, he despatched Mr. Clerk to the queen-mother for the same object; and, though all this did not produce the reformation, nor was seen in the light which his majesty expected, nevertheless he suppressed his just in dignation, from the respect which he entertained for the king, his brother-in-law ; it was, therefore, that, on dismissing the French attendants, he concealed their offences as much as possible, out of love for him, giving them not only all that they could demand, but also rewards in money, and presents besides : he also did them the honour to visit them in person before their departure. He ordered their expenses to be defrayed, and provided them with all that was necessary to the comfort and safety of their voyage, both by sea and land; and, after all this, sent Lord Carleton, ambassador extraordinary, express to the king, his dearly beloved bro ther, to inform him of their intolerable behaviour, and of the just reasons which had moved him thus to extricate himself from the dangers, which might have resulted therefrom, to the prejudice of the two crowns. With regard to the other article, touching the immuni ties promised to our Roman catholics, we do not deny, in the first place, that such was really an article of the treaty, as will appear by the treaty itself. But in the second place, it is contended that it was ex pressed, in a separate paper, that the infraction of this point would not constitute an infraction of the treaty, which was expressly promised by the principal ministers of state, who declared this to be a treaty of state and not of religion. As to the third point, that was agreed to by our commis 140 APPENDIX,

sioners, and accepted by theirs, simply as a matter of form, to satisfy the Roman catholic party of France and the pope. Of the fourth point, there was a modification by a clause which obliged the Roman catholics to make a moderate use of the liberty which was allowed them, and to pay that obe dience which good and true subjects owe to their king. For the last point, his majesty has therein even displayed his equanimity and moderation, inasmuch as that he hath, forborne to make any new laws against the Roman catholics, and has exercised more lenity in the execution of those already in force than had hitherto been customary, not having allowed one drop of blood to be spilt, either of Jesuit, priest, or other Roman catholic, since his accession to the throne. So far, therefore, is his majesty from having merited the accusation of an infraction of the treaty in this particular, that he himself has rather just reason to complain of a breach of promise, inasmuch as that what was considered to be in tended merely as a matter of form, is now insisted upon with so much earnestness as the most essential and binding part of the treaty; and, above all, so much is the affair exag gerated by the Bishop of Mande, who pretends to consider it as amounting to a persecution, that he has thereby not only endeavoured to create ill-will between the king and queen, but also an open enmity between the two kingdoms. And whereas his majesty may with justice exact for the future more sincerity in the observance of this promise: with equal reason may he complain, that, what was consi dered as the grand foundation of the alliance and confedera tion of the two crowns, has been neglected. For when, ort the occasion of the marriage, it was proposed to establish conjointly an offensive and defensive alliance, in order to confirm and insure the closer union of these two kingdoms, although, for the time, the subject was waived, from the APPENDIX. 141 fear of clogging the treaty of marriage with a condition that might have impeded its completion ; nevertheless, it was at that time expressly understood, that, as soon as the articles of the contract should be sealed, measures should be imme diately taken for the conclusion of the league. But when, after the marriage, it was again proposed to proceed to the final arrangement of the affair, objections were made under pretext of the difficulties which were likely to result in arrang ing the forms of such a confederation, with a promise, how ever, of a strict observance of it in effect. And this promise was solemnly made by the king himself, attended by the queens, the princes, and princesses of the blood royal, the lords of the council, and the principal officers of the crown ; whereupon it was agreed that a corps of English infantry should be allowed to land at Calais, under the command of Count Mansfeld, with free permission, on all occasions, to march, to take up quarters, or to reimbark ; and that his most christian majesty should add thereto a proportionate number of French cavalry, for the purpose of making conjointly an in cursion into Alsace, with a view of recovering the Palatinate. And of all this was a promise given, not only to his majesty's ambassadors, the Earls of Carlisle and Holland, but even to the king himself, by the ambassadors extraordinary of his most christian majesty, Mons. de la Ville aux Clercs, and the Marquis d'Effiat; a promise not simply given as a matter of form and ceremony, but as one which materially affected the honour and welfare of the two crowns : the failure whereof has cost his majesty, without any advantage therefrom, more than a million of pounds, and the lives of ten thousand of his good subjects. The hopes also of the princes of Germany have been thereby frustrated, their party reduced to a state of despair, and a door opened to all the disasters which have since befallen them in Germany. Nor has any reason been assigned for this calamitous violation of the agreement on the part if his most christian majesty, 142 APPENDIX. other than the danger to which France would have exposed herself in provoking the hostility of the Spaniards, who were at that time in force, both in Haynault and in Artois; or that the army might have been obliged to retreat into France, in the event of its being repulsed, or encountering any other disaster. Whereas moreover, by the fundamental treaty made in the year 1610, and ratified, inasmuch as relates to commerce, in the French courts of parliament, it was distinctly agreed, that although, on some occasions, the issue of letters of re prisal might be called for, nevertheless they should not be put in force upon goods or merchandize which had been brought and lodged in any port or harbour of the two king doms. In defiance of this article the merchandize of his majesty's subjects has been, and actually is, seized upon, not only in the ports and towns of France, but even in their public markets (foires), where every one should enjoy a freedom of commerce ; and, in the absence of an excuse or public pretext to justify such a measure, recourse is had to some old and long-forgotten law, which is thereupon put in force against the English merchants, by the seizure of their goods, and the interruption of their trade. And although, after repeated solicitations, assurances of the restoration of such property have been four times publicly given by word of mouth by the king himself to the ambassadors of his ma jesty, so it is, that even to this moment no such thing has taken place ; a circumstance sensibly affecting the honour of public faith, and giving rise to a number of complaints on the part of his majesty's subjects, who implore therein his aid and protection, and beseech him to procure them repara tion of their wrongs. Moreover, his most christian majesty has not thought proper to conform to the articles entered into with those of the reformed religion of his kingdom, and particularly with those of Rochelle, who consented to and accepted APPENDIX. 143 them on the immediate interposition of his majesty, who had proposed them only from respect to and for the satisfaction of the king his dear brother ; insomuch, that his majesty conceives himself bound, not only by the requisition of the party interested, and the confidence they repose in him, but also by the judgment and opinion of the world at large, to importune his brother-in-law, with a view to the observance of this compact. To which may be added the promise given of assistance to the King of Denmark and Count Mansfeld, of which pro mise, although strongly and repeatedly urged, it has been found impossible to procure the entire fulfilment; from which have arisen greater disorder and mischief than there would otherwise have been reason to apprehend. Herein therefore appears, besides other things, infrac tions and evasions of actual promises, conventions, and treaties made without any secret reservation and without form, so that his majesty has just reason to doubt that there may be still some new and contrary designs on foot. Nevertheless, such is the affection which his majesty feels in his royal bosom for the king his dear brother, and such is the confidence he reposes in his justice and prudence, that he still inclines to hope that their mutual agreements and promises will hereafter be better kept and observed ; and that, on a good and mature consideration of the just reasons assigned by his majesty, as well as of the present state of Christianity, and more particularly of his affairs, the said king will lay aside all jealousy and ill-will on his part, and will henceforth proceed with a firm and resolute step, and of his own free will and inclination, to the advancement of the common cause, and (as is wisely and justly observed by the ambassador) to the preservation of the interests and amity of the two crowns ; it being most certain, that, as long as these two kingdoms shall continue to maintain a good understanding, their greatest enemy, with all his con 144 APPENDIX.

quests, will never be able to attain the dominion to which he aspires ; whereas, should they disunite, that power -which leaves the other to Jail a victim will deprive itself of the means of insuring its own safety hereafter. Lastly ; the visit and deportment of Monsieur de Bassom- pierre have been very agreeable to his majesty, who is there fore desirou* to answer him fairly and clearly upon the two points set forth by him ; the one touching the conscience of the queen, the other the more favourable treatment which he wishes to procure for the Roman catholics of this king dom. For the first, his most christian majesty may rest assured that the terms of the treaty shall be strictly observed in this particular ; and, for the fulfilment of his engagement, the king will appeal to the testimony of the queen herself. And, on the second head, his majesty, from the love which he bears to his dear consort, will show all the indulgence -to the Roman catholics which the constitution and the security of the state will allow. Signed— [Thomas Coventry*,] Keeper of the Seals—. [Marlborough,] High Treasurer — [Manchester,] Pre sident of the Council — Buckingham, High-Admiral — Pem- b roke — Dorset — Carlisle — Holland — Connoua rs (Conway) — Carleton — Cocke (Cook).

No. 7.

To the foregoing tedious expostulation, Bassompierre made a reply ; of which, as we have seen, he himself thought very well ; and which is certainly superior, in point of vivacity, • to The the names English between note; brackets but thereare blanks is no in part the copy of it in worththe Ambassades, extract-

from which this paper is translated. APPENDIX. 145

ing, except the following, which relates to that most extraor dinary circumstance, the queen's Penance to Tyburn. My readers will observe, that the marshal denies the fact with as muck boldness and decision, as the English commissioners had asserted it; and tue cannot but inonder hot» so notorious a circumstance, alleged to have taken place ostentatiously in the presence of crowds of people, could, within a fern months after, become the subject of doubt, and of official statements so directly contradictory of each other. The ambassador's denial is, however, much weakened in its effect upon my mind, by his offer to justify the fact, if it did take place. His arguments for the propriety of praying for the deceased malefactors would have been quite thrown away, if there had been no colour whatsoever for the charge} and we should not forget that these malefactors,— the gunpowder traitors,— for whose eternal welfare the French queen, and her French attendants, were so charitably interested, were wholly unconnected with France, or the French, except in the single article qf religion.

Je suis bien obligé par ordre particulier que j'ai du roy, et parcequ'il importe à la reyne sa sœur, de repartir contre le bruit que l'on a semé par tout ; et dont vous faites maintenant le principal motif et fondement de l'esloignement des domestiques, que l'on avoit mené ladite reyne par un long detour à travers d'un parc en procession faire ses prières et devotions à un gibet, sur l'advenue d'un grand chemin ; ce qui a causé, à ce que vous dites, un grand scandale, honte et mocquerie à la reyne. Je scay assurément, Messieurs, que vous ne croyez pas ce que vous publiez aux autres pour leur faire croire, et que l'on a esté plus de six semaines après que la reyne a eu fait son jubilé sans s'en esmouvoir ; mais comme à ceux que l'on veut condamner, toutes les actions demeurent crimes, on a voulu en esloignant les dits domestiques, leur mettre sus quelque nouvelle accusation, pour justifier un h 1 46 APPENDIX.

procédé qui ne se peut justement approuver ; et l'on a trouvé ou forgé cecy hors de toute apparence et verification. La Reyne de la Grande Bretagne par la permission du Roy son mary, gaigna le jubilé à la Chapelle des Peres de l'Ora toire à Saint Gemmes (St. James's) , avec la devotion convenable à une grande princesse, si bien née et zélée à sa religion comme elle est, lesquelles devotions se terminerent aux vespres du jour ; et quelque temps après l'ardeur du soleil estant passée, elle s'alla promener au parc de St. Gemmes et de la à celuy de Hipparc (Hyde Park) qui est joignant, ainsi qu'elle avoit autres fois accoustumé de faire, et souvent en la compagnie du Roy son mary; mais qu'elle ait este en procession, que l'on y ait fait des prières publiques ou particulieres, hautes ou basses, que l'on ait approché le gibet de cinquante pas, que l'on se soit suis à genoux tenant les heures ou chappellets à la main, c'est ce que la médisance mesme n'a pas voulu jusques a mainte nant imposer; mais à ce que vous dites ils ont prié Dieu facilement. Je suis certes bien aise, Messieurs, que ne trouvant rien à blasmer en leurs actions, ny en leurs paroles, vous accusiez leurs plus secrettes pensées ; et que pour chasser contre vos promesses tous les domestiques de la reyne, vous en prenez ce noble sujet, que vous pensez qu'ils ont peu penser à Dieu à la veuë d'un gibet. On dit que l'on y a pendu des mes- chans et malfaiteurs ; je l'advoùe, mais qu'ils ayent prié Dieu pour eux je le nie ; et grand ils l'eussent fait, ils eussent bien fait. Et quelque meschant qui ait jamais esté exécuté, il a bien esté condamné à la mort, mais jamais à la damnation ; et jamais on n'a deiFendu de prier Dieu pour luy. Vous me dittes que c'est blasmer la mémoire des roys qui les ont fait mourrir ; au contraire je loue la justice de, ces roys là, et implore la misericorde du roy des roys, afin qu'il soit satisfait de la sentence de mort corporelle ; et qu'il face la grace par nos prieres et intercessions (si elles sont assez suffisantes) aux âmes sur lesquelles la justice n'y la grace des roys de ce APPENDIX. 147 monde n'ont point de pouvoir ny d'effect. Pour la conclu sion je nie formellement que ceste action ait esté commise, et m'offre quant et quant de prouver l'on eust très bien fait de la commettre.

Escrit. Signé le 16 de Novembre, 1626.

Dans le restablissement, qui s'est fait auprés de la per sonne de la Reyne de la Grande Bretagne, d'un evesque et de douze prestres, sa majesté a fait savoir à Monsieur le Mareschal de Bassompierre, ambassadeur extraordinaire du roy trés chrestien, son beau-frere, et entend, que le dit evesque n'usurpera aucune authorité hors la maison de la reyne sa femme, comme d'administrer les ordres, faire des prestres, et donner des missions aux prestres d'Angleterre. Que dans les douze prestres qui sont remis, il n'y aura aucun jesuit n'y pere de l'oratoire, ou autre qui ait esté desdits ordres, sa majesté ayant neantmoins trouvé bon que le confesseur de la reyne sa femme, et son compagnon, qui sont peres de l' oratoires y fussent conservés. Qu'aucun des domestiques, qui ont esté licentiés seroient renvoyés hormis le médecin Chartier, qui pourra revenir subalterne à Monsieur de Mayerne, premier médecin. Sa majesté a prié particulièrement Monsieur le Mareschal de Bassompierre, de tesmoigner à la reyne sa belle-mere, combien la reyne sa fille, est bien et vallablement servie de ses dames de la chambre dulict, sans y en adjouster de nou velles, comme elle pourra considerer ; que neantmoins pour la contenter, sa majesté s'accordera à son désir d'y en remet tre deux. reyne,desditsn'apporte Sa majesté sa prestres fille. aucun prie Fait, et trouble aussy officiers &c. la ny reyne scandalequi sa reviendront belle-mere, dans la soit maison que tel le choix de qu'il la

Signé CONVÉ. i 2 148 APPENDIX.

No. 8.

Lettre de Monsieur le Mareschal de Bassompierre à Monsieur d'Herbault.

This letter, which gives a summary of the marshal' s proceed ings and success, is thought a proper addition to his journal.

Monsieur, Puisque c'est la coutume de magistrats de rendre compte de leur charges apres en avoir achevé la fonctions, je suis obligé d'en faire autant en vostre endroit sur ce que je viens de finir la commission que le roy m'a donné en ce pays. Et bien que le compliment de mon depart, et le che min jusqu'à Gravesande ayent occupé presque cette journée je veux donner le peu qui m'en reste au récit de ce qui s'est passé en mon ambassade, de la quelle je n'ay voulu plustot escrire le sujet, de peur qu'un nouvel employ ne m'obligeast à y demeurer plus long temps pour l'exécuter. Je me con tente d'avoir terminer plus heureusement l'affaire qui m'avoit amené que vous ny moi n'avions esperé, lorsque je parti de la cour. Vous sçavez, monsieur, en quel etast etoient les choses ; les domestiques renvoyés avec une façon du tout extraordinaire, la reyne de la Grande Bretagne tres mal avec le roy son mary, et nous sur le pointe d'entrer en guerre ouverte avec luy, pour le forcer d'observer ce qu'il avoit promis et juré. J'adjouste à cela la persecution des catholiques en Angleterre, la mauvaise reception faite en France au Milord Carleton, et l'affront qu'avoit receu Mon- taigu, pour vous faire souvenir comme les affaires y etoient mal préparées, et du peu d'espoir que nous avions alors de pouvoir faire reiissir quelque chose avantageusement pour le service du roy. APPENDIX. 149

Ce sont les choses qui ont précédé mon arrivée en Angle terre, où dabord j'eprouvay ce que j'avois bien preveu, que la compagnie du pere Sancy pouvoit beaucoup nuire à mon dessein, et peu profiter. Vous avez veu par mes précédentes combien j'ai souffert de peine sur ce sujet. J'ay eu en suitte à combattre l'esprit de la reine qui etoit tellement animée de l'outrage qu'on luy avoit fait par l'esloignement de ses domestiques que ne la pouvois en aucune façon remettre. Il a fallu me deffendre des prestres et catholiques Anglois, qui voudroient que ces deux couronnes fussent en guerre, et qui par là se persuadent de pour restablir la religion en cette isle. Les puritains la désirent, croyant par là amé liorer le party Huguenot en France, par la protection de ce roy. Monsieur de Soubize, qui la fomentoit, les ambassa deurs du Roy d'Angleterre, qui se sont meslés de la paix donnée par le roy à ceux de la Rochelle, leur ayant plus promis que le roy ne leur avoit accordé, desiroient une rup ture entre ces deux couronnes. Les dames et domestiques Anglois de la re3'ne, m'estoient du tout contraires, qui ne pretendoient point faire place à ceux que je voulois restablir. J'adjouste à cela les difficultés que j'ay eues de vaincre l'esprit de ce roy, fier, entier, et animé contre les domes tiques François, par sa propre inclination, et par une opinion invéterée, qu'ils estaient cause de toutes les brouilleries, trop frequentes entre la reyne sa femme et luy. Voila les ennemis que j'ay eu en teste, et qu'il a fallu surmonter, avant que d'entrer dans la négociation de la quelle je vous mandé de temps en temps les difficultés, que s'y sont présentées, et à quoy elles se sont terminées et n'ay pour le present a vous dire ce que j'ay conclu. Vous sçavez, monsieur, que les principales choses à quoy le roy eut égard, en m'envoyant en Angleterre ont esté de 150 APPENDIX. procurer que sa reputation ne demeurast point engagé, que la reyne sa sœur fust contente et satisfaite, l'état de sa con science assuré, le service de sa personne restably, les of ficiers nécessaires pour sa santé et sa personne, avec quelques autres rerais, de procurer une ferme union et intelligence entre le roy et la reyne, d'obtenir un meilleur traittement pour les prestres catholiques Anglois, et un reglement pour ce qui concerne la marine entre ces deux couronnes. Pour ce qui est de l'interest du Roy, vous trouverez, Monsieur, la satisfaction complette, et que la Reyne, sa sœur, se ressent infiniment obligée de ce qu'il a fait pour elle, l'ayant restably en une condition en laquelle elle se tient très contente et heureuse, et où elle vit maintenant avec le Roy en parfaite amitié. Premièrement elle a eu, pour ce qui est de sa conscience, le restablissement d'un evesque, et dix prestres, d'une con fesseur, et d'une compagnon, et de dix musiciens de sa chapelle ; que l'on fera achever celle de Sainct James avec le cimetière, et on luy permet d'en faire bastir une autre dans son palais de Sommerset, aux dépens dudit Roy, son mary. Pour le service de sa personne, elle aura de sa nation deux dames de la chambre du lict, trois femmes de chambre, une lingère, une empeseuse (a clear-starchtr) . Pour ce qui touche à sa santé, deux médecins, un apoti- caire, et un chirurgien. Pour sa maison, un grand chambellan. Un escuyer. Un secretaire. Un gentilhomme huissier de la chambre privée. Un de la chambre de presence. Un valet de chambre privée. Un de presence, baxter groom (q. baker ?) Et un valet de garderobe. Pour ses officiers, un gentilhomme servant, et tous les of ficers de la bouche, et du gobelet. APPENDIX. 151

Finalement, pour sa gloire particuliere, j'ay obtenu l'élar gissement de tous les prestres detenus prisonniers en Angle terre, et de la suppression des poursuivans et informeurs, qui est ce que les catholiques Anglais ont toujours demandé avec tant de passion, et ce qu'ils n'avoient sceu obtenir. J'eusse eu la mesme satisfaction en ce qui regarde les affaires que nous avons avec les Anglais pour la Marine, si par une precipitation, que j'ose nommer inconsiderée, on n'eust tout gasté en France 5 car lorsque les affaires pre- noient le meilleur train, que j'avois obtenu mainlevée de tous les vaisseaux et marchandises détenues en Angleterre, et que l'on m'avoit offert de me remettre ceux qui estoient coupables et de restituer les innocens, l'arrest des merchan dises Angloises fait à Rouen et depuis confirmé par le conseil du Roy, sans m'en avoir precedamment donné advis ny receu le mien, et sans avoir donné prétexte à cette action, estoit bien mal fait avant que d'avoir pris le refus de les rendre pour un desny de justice ; cet arrest a esté cause que non seulement on m'a refusé ce qu'on m'avoit promis, mais que l'on a aussy arresté pardeça les marchandises de Francois, les Vaisseaux Normands qui se trouvent en mer, et j'ay bien peur, que l'on fera pis à l'advenir, si sagement on n'esteint ce feu, qui est capable en peu de temps de faire un grand embrasement. Je me suis si souvent plaint par mes lettres de nostre mauvais procéder que j'ay de vous en faire des reproches. Je ne m'en puis toutefois empescher, et cependant j'ay laissé les choses en ce poinct, que l'on envoyera un Ambassadeur Extraordinaire de cette cour en France, pour terminer par de la ces differents et faire quelques propositions que l'on ne m'a pas dites, mais que m'imagine estre sur les affaires de Hollande, d'Allemagne, et de Dannemarc. Le Roy m'a dit que Monsieur Gorin (Goring) aura cette commission; ce neantmoins, une dame m'asseura hier, que ce seroit le Duc de 152 APPENDIX.

Boukinquam, que iroit en France ; ce que je ne puis croire, car il m'a toujours (dit) qu'il n'y retournerois jamais, si on ne l'en prioit, puisqu'on lui avoit une fois fait dire, que l'on n'auroit pas sa veuë agréable. Il ne se peut dire comme le Roy et toute cette cour ont bien vescu avec moy depuis que jay esté en termes d'accom modement ; c'a esté des continuelles festes et afFectiones, qui n'eussent pas sitost pris fin, si je n'eusse fait un effort pour prendre conjé de la compagnie. Le Roy m'a fait en partant un tres beau present d'une en seigne de quatre diamans avec une perle, et la Reyne m'a fait l'honneur de me bailler une belle bague. Je laisse, à mon opinion, les affaires en l'estat, qu'il se peut désirer, dont je vous ay voulu rendre ce compte exact et particulier par ce prestre qui a passé sous le nom de la Pierre, que vous m'avez envoyé, et qui n'a fait autre fruit en Angleterre, qui de me foit importuner. Il a voulu s'en aller en diligence, sans me dire quelles affaires hasteroient son retour, et moi que ne me mets guerres en peine de les scavoir, je suis très satisfait de son absence ; et qu'il me donne le moyen de commencer à vous rendre très humblement graces du soin que vous avez eu de moy pendant cette négociation, et vous demander mille pardons de tent de peines et d'importunités que ma commission m'a forcé de vous donner, et que je repareray par tous les louables services que vous pourrez désirer. J'espère le bien de vous voir dans douze jours, si les vents et la tem- peste ne s'opposent à mon dessein. De Gravesande,ce 12. de Decembre, 1626.

Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. — P. 28.

The fact is (as we learn from a letter of the time, com municated to me by Mr. D'Israeli, from the British Mu APPENDIX. 153 seum) that lie hastened, dying and in state disgrace, from the Bath, as Bath was then called, to " countermine his un- derminers ; and, as he termed it, to cast dust in their eyes. As the case stands, it was best that he gave over the world, for they say his friends fell from him apace, and some near about him ; and howsoever he had fared with his health, it is verily thought he would never have been himself again in power and credit. I never knew so great a man so soon and so generally censured, for men's tongues talk very liberally and freely, but how truly I cannot judge." (This letter-writer is addressing a friend of Salisbury's.) Of his death he says, " He died 24 May, on Sunday, at Marlborough, in the par sonage-house, as he was coming hitherward. He hath al lotted out but 200/. for his funeral, and as much to the poor." From another manuscript letter of the day, I add a still fuller account of the prevalent opinions of this fallen mini ster, who, like all great politicians, is at length found to be very much like a conjuror when all his tricks are discovered.

July, 1612. " The memory of the late lord-treasurer grows daily worse and worse, and more libels come as it were continually ; whether it be that practice and jugglings come more and more to light, or that men love to follow the sway of the multitude. But it is certain that they who may best main tain it have not forborne to say that he juggled with religion, with the king, queen, their children, with nobility, parlia ment, with friends, foes, and generally with all. Some of his chaplains have been heard to oppose themselves when they could in the pulpit against these scandalous speeches, but with little fruit. " There was a practice in Hertfordshire to have laid open certain of his own impaled grounds there the day of his funeral, but upon notice of it, it was prevented ; but now of late it hath been attempted, and in some part performed again." 154 APPENDIX.

In the manuscript diary of Sir Symond D'Ewes, he says more justly of Salisbury, " The times since have justified this man's actions, that howsoever he might be an ill chris tian in respect of his unparalleled lust and hunting after strange flesh, yet that he was a good statesman, and no ill member of the commonwealth, for during the time he was lord-treasurer of England he tooke care to supply the ordi- narie expences of the crowne by the ordinarie revenues thereof, without oppressing and depauperating the subject with new imposicions and unlimited taxes. And therefore when I consider in what a general hate almost of all sortes he died, and what infamous libels were made of him after his death instead of funeral elegies, I cannot but conceive that the first ground of the people's hatred to him arose from their love formerly borne to Robert de Ebroicis, or D'Evreux, Earl of Essex, of whose death and destruction no man doubted that his subtle head, actuated by his father's principles, had been the contriver and finisher."

THE END.

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